A new Perry Mason I hadn't read yet: "The Case of the Fenced In Woman" by Erle Stanley Gardner. It was pretty good. It had an amazingly interesting premise: a man named Carson sells a plot of land to a man named Eden and starts to build him a house on it. Then Eden finds out that part of the land belongs to Carson's wife, who is divorcing him, and wants Eden to stop building on her land. Carson assures Eden that he's got so much dirt on his wife that it won't be a problem, so Eden keeps building. After the house is finished, it turns out Carson's dirt was on the wrong woman, and his wife brings a contractor over and builds a barbed wire fence right down the middle of the house and pool out back, on the property line, and moves into her half of the house! She wants to provoke Eden and make his life hell, so he will in turn make her ex-husband's life hell. When Carson turns up dead next to the pool, the list of suspects gets long very quickly, with Eden and Carson's ex-wife right at the top. The best part of the story (and this is why I love Perry Mason: it's so damned improbable) was how many naked or nearly naked women ended up in that pool on the day Carson died. I imagine it must have looked like the Playboy Mansion over there! I'll definitely reread it again some day.
"Flowers in the Attic" by V.C. Andrews was a reread, one I've read a hundred times before. I always thought of it as lighthearted trash, but it was actually a lot better than I remembered it to be. I actually cried at some parts. I can't imagine anyone not knowing the plot, but here goes: Chris, Cathy, Carrie, and Cory are four adorable little children with loving parents when their father is killed in a car accident. Their pretty, helpless mother, Corrine, decides to take them back to their ancestral home, Foxworth Hall, where she can beg forgiveness of her father, who disowned her when she eloped with her half-uncle fifteen years earlier (and later, in the prequel "Garden of Shadows", we find out that he wasn't her half-uncle, but actually her half-brother, but they never knew that). Until she has won back her father's love, she and her mother hide the children in a little room at one end of the great house, and let them have the run of the attic. Corrine tells them it will only be for a few days, until she can bring them down to meet their grandfather. Those few days stretch into three and half years, until Chris and Cathy finally take matters into their own hands and escape. A lot of stuff is going on in this book, and I really enjoyed rereading it. It was one that Andrews herself actually wrote, before she died and a ghostwriter took over her name and started churning out lesser quality stuff. Not like this is great literature or anything, but it's fun. I'll definitely reread it again someday.
"Luck Be a Lady, Don't Die" is the second Rat Pack mystery by Robert J. Randisi. It's Vegas, 1960, and Frank, Dean, and the rest of the boys are back at the Sands for the premiere of their movie "Ocean's Eleven". Pit Boss Eddie G. steps in to help Frank find a girlfriend who's missing, Mary Clarke. Turns out Mary is also Mob Boss Sam Giancana's girlfriend. Mary and her sister, Lily, stole some money from Lily's boss, Vito, who stole it from MoMo. Stupid people. You don't steal from MoMo! Everyone finds out the hard way as bodies start piling up. It was pretty fun. I'll probably reread it again some day.
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