Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots; Fire and Blood; The Address

First up, a book about Mary, Queen of Scots and how literally everyone in that poor woman's life screwed her over. She was sent to France at a young age to marry the dauphin, and when he died France sent her back to Scotland, where her half-brother was ruling in her stead and quite content to keep on doing so. Mary tried to wrest control away from the lords who had held it for the last 18 years with no luck. She married Darnley, who was universally despised, and bore him a son named James. Darnley was murdered, and Mary rightfully feared for her life and fled, only to be captured by Bothwell and raped. Mary was forced to marry him, became pregnant and miscarried. She ran to England, hoping her cousin Elizabeth would help her, but Elizabeth was shaky on her own throne, and had no use for her Catholic cousin. She locked her up and tried to forget about her, until her own advisers bullied her into executing Mary. It was a sad tale of a tragic life.


Instead of finishing "Winds of Winter", George R. R. Martin has decided to go backwards and write about how the Targaryens got their start in the Seven Kingdoms. He only got halfway through in this one, which leads me to believe there's going to be a second one. Seriously, can you just finish Ice and Fire first?! Then I'll happily read whatever fan fiction you produce. Don't get me wrong, it was very interesting (if not a bit confusing, after all, there are a lot of characters who only stick around for a sentence), but c'mon. I'm not going to live forever, and I would love to know how the damn series ends. Sigh.

I was a bit disappointed with "The Address" by Fiona Davis. It sounded interesting, about the Dakota in New York, but it ended up being very predictable. It's one of those books I won't remember six months from now. Sara works as head of housekeeping at a posh London hotel when she's offered a job at the new Dakota apartment home in New York. Sara moves across the Atlantic and starts a forbidden relationship with a married architect. Meanwhile, a hundred years in the future, Bailey is out of rehab and looking to get back on her feet when her adopted cousin, Melinda offers her a job redesigning the Dakota apartment her great-grandfather left her.

Count of 9

I love the Hard Case Crime books, they're so fun. This one is by Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason books I love so much. "Count of 9" features private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. A wealthy globe trotter named Crockett has had a priceless jade idol stolen during one of his parties, and he hires Bertha to work the door at his next party to make sure his other idol doesn't get taken. Unfortunately, despite all the precautions, the other idol along with a blowgun, are stolen. Lam is able to return the blowgun but Crockett is busy so he gives it to his wife. The next day, Crockett is dead from a poison dart from said blowgun. I enjoyed it. 

Johnny Cash

I do love Johnny Cash, and this was a nice pictorial/biography about the Man in Black. No really new information, since I read Hilburn's masterful biography, but it was nice to see pictures, especially family photos.

Gone With the Wind

"Gone With the Wind" was the first grown up book I ever read, I was 9 years old and it took me three weeks to get through it. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I loved watching the movie with my mom (those clothes!), so I was determined to love the book as well. I've read it a bunch of times, maybe not as many as "Lonesome Dove", but it's pretty close (I caught part of the movie on TV at Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, which prompted this reread). As a teen/young adult I, like a lot of people, imagined what would have happened if Mitchell had written a sequel. Of course Scarlett and Rhett would have gotten back together. Of course they would have lived happily ever after (btw, I hated "Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley. It was *terrible*). But reading it again now, almost the age Rhett was at the end of the book, I think differently. Scarlett was a terrible person. She treated the people that loved her so badly. I believe Rhett when he says he doesn't love her anymore. I understand how he feels. I loved someone so hard for 8 years of my life, and while it took awhile, eventually it was like a switch flipped and I no longer felt anything for him. I think I know exactly how Rhett felt at the end, after loving her so hard and wishing and hoping she'd return his love some day, and then finally he just gave up and the switch flipped. I hope Rhett found happiness after leaving Scarlett, and I hope Scarlett went back to Tara (not Ireland!) and learned to be a grown up.

The Case of the Stuttering Bishop; Look Alive Twenty-Five

I know, I haven't reread any Perry Masons in awhile, but I woke up super early the other day and didn't feel like reading any of the approximately 5,000 books I have checked out, so I finished a Perry Mason I started months ago and almost finished but set aside when I got busy. Perry is visited by a man claiming to be a bishop who is looking for a young woman who was adopted. Her biological grandfather is very wealthy, and is being hoodwinked by an impostor posing as his granddaughter. The bishop wants the real granddaughter to get the inheritance that's coming to her. 

Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum "Look Alive Twenty-Five" was all right, not as good as some of the others that have come out recently. Vince orders Stephanie and Lulu to go work at a deli he inherited when a man he posted bond for skipped. Rather than sell the deli, he decides to keep it and have them run it, see if he can make a profit. Of course Stephanie and Lulu are just as terrible at running a deli as you can imagine, and it's compounded by the fact that the managers keep disappearing under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only a shoe. Stephanie has the brilliant idea of setting herself up as bait to be kidnapped so she can solve the mystery. The ending was a cliffhanger, and actually pretty good.

Charlesgate Confidential; Marilla of Green Gables

A couple of books that couldn't have been more different, yet they were both really fun. First up: a Hard Case Crime by Scott Von Doviak called "Charlesgate Confidential". The novel flipped back and forth through time: 1946, 1986, and 2014. Back in 1946, the Charlesgate in Boston was a rundown former luxury hotel that was full of working girls and criminals. Danny T ran an illegal card game on the 8th floor, and one night it gets hit. Danny tracks down the guys that pulled the job and forces them to help him rob a nearby art museum. Jake and Shane help him do the job, then kill him and take off with the artwork. They hide the art at the Charlesgate, and then Shane is arrested before they can go back and retrieve it. Jake skips town for awhile but comes back to take the fall so his brother doesn't get the chair. In 1986, the Charlesgate is a dorm for Emerson College. Tommy lives there with his buddies and is writing a series for the school paper about the Charlesgate when he's approached by Shane, recently paroled with a doozy of a story about hidden artwork. And in 2014, the Charlesgate is a luxury condominium complex. The artwork was never found, so criminals are still after it. It was a super fun story with lots of great twists and turns.

It's no secret I love me some Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Marilla mentioned in the first book that she and Gilbert Blythe's father, John, were sweethearts when they were kids and much to Anne's (and mine, and Sarah McCoy's) dismay, she refuses to elaborate. This is Sarah's idea of what happened when Marilla was a young lady, and it was quite good. I thought she did a nice job of making Marilla interesting without straying too far from the foundation Montgomery laid. Marilla's mother died when she was thirteen, leaving her to care for Green Gables, her older brother Matthew and their father. Marilla took that responsibility very seriously, and despite being in love with John they quarrel and she breaks things off with him. It was a sweet story that made me cry in a few spots (and also made me want to reread the Anne series, but good grief, I seriously don't have time right now! I still haven't finished rereading Perry Mason!).

Mycroft and Sherlock; Rare Books Uncovered

I really enjoyed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's first book, "Mycroft Holmes", and this one did not disappoint. Mycroft is struggling to raise his younger brother, Sherlock. Sherlock is almost nineteen and difficult, refusing to stay at school and study, intent on forging his own path in life. Mycroft is worried for his safety, but of course Sherlock is oblivious to his cares. Sherlock was quite fun in this book, it's funny to imagine him as a young man. One of the young orphan boys Mycroft's friend Douglas takes care of has died, full of puncture wounds. Sherlock dives right into the case and nearly dies. It was great fun, I really enjoyed it.

Another really fun one, "Rare Books Uncovered" by Rebecca Rago Barry. I could read stories like this all day long. Sometimes rare books are found in the most incredible places: attics, garage sales, in other books. She talked about some famous book scouts, like Larry McMurtry, who combed the country looking for rare books. It sounds like so much fun, driving around, visiting used books stores and garage sales, finding neat treasures. She was careful to emphasis how unlikely it is, but it's still fun to contemplate.

Walking Dead Vol. 30: New World Order; An Easy Death

Volume 30 of the "Walking Dead" picks up where 29 left off: Michonne, Eugene, and a group of Rick's survivors are headed for the settlement where Stephanie lives (Stephanie being the woman Eugene spoke to over the radio). It's the largest group of survivors in one place that any of them had ever seen. They meet the woman in charge, Pamela, who calls herself the Governor (uh oh). Michonne has a major reunion (no spoilers, I promise, but it was really good). Pamela decides she wants to meet Rick, so they head back to the settlement so the two can have a chat. It's an uneasy meeting: Rick doesn't like the way Pamela's settlement is run. It's based on how the world was before the zombie apocalypse, so if you were a high power, wealthy individual in the old world, you get the biggest house, nicest things, etc. Rick feels a new world is in order, with more equality. So we'll see how that all plays out.

Charlaine Harris is back with what seems to be a new series. It's an alternative history, imagining if President Franklin Roosevelt had been assassinated and the United States fell apart. The Russians took the west coast, the British took the east coast, the South became "Dixie", and Mexico took back most of Texas. What's left merged with Oklahoma to become Texoma, and that's where Gunnie Rose lives. Lizbeth by birth, she's a gunnie by trade: a hired gun who escorts people and good across the dangerous borders. She's hired by two Russian wizards to help her track down a man in Mexico. Things go all kinds of wrong, but it was super interesting and lots of fun. I'm looking forward to more of her adventures!

Dracul; We Sold Our Souls; The Plantagenets

Dacre Stoker is Bram Stoker's great grand-nephew. I read his previous book, "Dracula the Undead", and enjoyed it, and this one was even better. Stoker argues that Bram's "Dracula" was meant to be a warning, fictionalized non-fiction, and his publishers refused to publish the first 100 or so pages, in which Bram discusses the strange things that happened in his childhood with his nanny. It was fascinating. This book tells that story. Bram is a young, sickly child on the brink of death who is miraculously healed by his nanny, who then disappears. Years later, Bram's sister swears she saw the nanny in Paris, and Bram admits he dreams of her often. Adult Bram is in perfect health and a star athlete at college. He and his sister and their older brother, who is a doctor with a sick wife, go off on a search to find the nanny and discover the truth about what really happened to Bram as a child.

Grady Hendrix is always fun, and I really enjoyed "We Sold Our Souls". Former guitarist for a metal group named Durt Wurk, Kris is a broken soul working at a hotel when she hears about her former bandmate, Terry, and his wildly successful post-Durt Wurk band, Koffin, putting on a farewell tour. Kris is determined to confront Terry and find out what happened the night Durt Wurk broke up. It was a lot of fun, although he got a bit musically technical for me. I like listening to music, but I don't understand what makes good music good :)

And finally, Dan Jones' hefty tome about the Plantagenet dynasty, which ruled England for 250 years before the Lancasters usurped the throne and started the whole Wars of the Roses mess. Starting with Henry II, he went through every Plantagenet king until Richard II. It was very lively, he made it interesting.

Wars of the Roses

Back to Richard III! You know I can't stay away for long :) This was an interesting collection of firsthand accounts from contemporary sources, both for and against against king in turn. There were also some interesting facts about life in medieval England mixed in for good measure. And lots of pictures. It was nicely put together.

Forbidden Door

The latest Jane Hawk book from Dean Koontz was pretty good. Jane is still on the run. She almost gets caught but kills the bad guy and continues to Borrego Springs to save Travis. Some of her allies from the previous books make guest appearances, which was nice, and a couple of the bad guys died, which was even nicer. No spoilers, but of course her story isn't over yet. I'm really curious how Koontz is going to wrap all this up.

Conan Doyle For the Defense

In addition to writing the popular Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also an amateur armchair detective himself. The case of Oscar Slater touched him and encouraged him to investigate. Slater was convicted of murdering an elderly woman in Scotland. Slater was innocent--it was pretty obvious. The prosecution had no evidence and was forced to browbeat some eyewitnesses into identifying Slater. Conan Doyle worked hard to free Slater, spending his own money on a legal defense, and after almost 20 years in prison Slater was released. Not so much of a happy ending, though--Conan Doyle thought Slater should reimburse him out of the money he got from his wrongful conviction, and Slater felt Conan Doyle was rich enough not to miss the money he fronted him and didn't see any reason to pay him back. The real killer was also never discovered. It was a sad case all the way around.

Under a Dark Sky; City of Bastards

I like Lori Rader-Day, her books are usually pretty good, and this one was no exception. Since her husband, Bix's, death nine months earlier, Eden has developed a crippling fear of the dark. While going through his papers, she finds a reservation for a dark sky park that he made to coincide with what would have been their 10th wedding anniversary. Eden goes, and discovers that Bix made reservations for them in a suite of a house with six other guests: strangers to Eden, they're old college friends. Eden would turn around and drive home, but it's dark, so she's stuck, at least for the evening. She plans to leave first thing in the morning, but then one of the houseguests is murdered during the night and everyone is a suspect. I enjoyed how she teased out the information (I don't want to spoil it, but everyone had motives/secrets/etc.).

"City of Bastards" by Andrew Shvarts is a sequel to "Royal Bastards", which I enjoyed. I liked this one, too. Tilla is staying in the capital city with the Princess Lyriana, enjoying her boyfriend, Zell, going to university and trying to fit in. Hard to do, when you're the bastard daughter of a rebel traitor. Tilla comes home one night and finds her roommate dead from an apparent suicide, but Tilla knows better. She soon discovers her father's forces have infiltrated even the highest levels of power, no one is safe. I'm guessing, by how it ended, that there will be another sequel :)

Anne Neville

I *really* wanted to like this book. There is so little nonfiction out there about Anne Neville. Unfortunately, Hicks is no fan of Richard III and makes no bones about it, so it was tough to read. He was adamant that there's not that much we can verify about Anne, but he jumps to some wild conclusions anyway. For instance, in the end he says that we can safely assume that Anne had a lot of sex in her life. Um, what? How can we assume that? Well, according to Hicks, she was married to Richard for twelve years and they only had one son. Since they shared a room almost constantly, which was unusual at the time (and remarked upon by their servants), Hicks says they must have been trying to conceive again. While I don't disagree, I also don't think we can make such a bold proclamation. Maybe (not that I'm suggesting this, I'm not) Richard was impotent and even though they shared a bed there's no way for us to know that they were having intercourse constantly. Maybe they just liked being together, did you ever think of that, Mr. Hicks? It's not uncommon. He also makes a big deal about the fact that no dispensation has ever been found to account for them being related in the first affinity (brother and sister in law). There's a dispensation to cover them being distant cousins, but Richard and Anne both knew they needed one to cover the fact that their siblings married and they obviously never sought one so therefore their marriage was never valid. Just because no one's ever *found* the dispensation doesn't mean it didn't exist. Good grief, it's been 500 years. Things get lost. They very well might have had one, and we'll never know. At any rate, the book had a little bit about Anne but more about laws and customs at the time. While interesting, not really what I was hoping for.

Last Days of Richard III

John Ashdown-Hill was (sadly, he passed away earlier this year) a terrific writer, he made nonfiction read like fiction. This book's focus was very narrow: just the last few months of King Richard's life (coincidentally, tomorrow is October 2, and King Richard's birthday. I know you were dying to know that!). Rather than fearing Henry Tudor's invasion, Richard was clearly looking forward to it. He had no doubt he would defeat the would be usurper and secure his claim to the throne. He went hunting, visited his mother, made plans to remarry. In short, he was living his normal life until he was tragically cut down on August 22 at Bosworth Field. Ashdown-Hill also gets into the search for Richard's DNA, and how he traced it to Canada. It was the samples taken from Richard's many times over great niece, Joy Isben, that were used to confirm the remains found in 2012 were indeed Richard, although this book was written before that event. All in all it was very interesting, and he paints a Henry Tudor in a much more decent light than I would have, pointing out that he actually treated Richard's remains with respect and had him properly buried.

The Lost Country

How "The Lost Country" by William Gay was finally discovered and published more than six years after his death was almost as interesting as the book itself. His very dedicated friends basically had a scavenger hunt with his notebooks after he died and pieced it together and got it published.
Set in the south after WWII, Edgewater is supposed to be going home to see his dying father, but he gets distracted along the way, falling in with a huckster, getting a young lady pregnant and having to marry her, having her leave him after the baby is stillborn. The characters are colorful and his prose reminds me a lot of William Faulkner, so I really enjoyed it.

Windfall

I really enjoyed "Windfall" by Jennifer E. Smith, even if it was a bit predictable. Alice is an orphan who lives with her aunt, uncle, and cousin Leo in Chicago. For the last few years, she's been secretly in love with their best friend, Teddy. Teddy's had a rough childhood, too. His dad is addicted to gambling and after bankrupting his family he skipped out, leaving Teddy's mom to raise him on her own. For Teddy's 18th birthday, Alice buys him a Powerball ticket. Teddy wins 141.3 million dollars, and just like that, the poor high school boy becomes a multimillionaire. As you can expect, he starts spending the money recklessly, worrying his mom, Leo, and especially Alice. Teddy offers Alice a share of the money, since she bought the ticket, but she doesn't want the burden of having that much money. She's also sad that Teddy doesn't return her feelings for him, and she can't decide what college to go to. There was a lot of teenage angst in this book! But it was fun and very sweet.

American Detective

Thomas Reppetto is a former detective who examines the history of detectives on various police forces throughout the years and how they handled some of their biggest cases (spoiler alert: not well). Amazingly enough, he somehow equates the decline of autonomous detectives with the rise of crime. I don't think it's quite that linear, but he tries to make the argument. I was honestly surprised I didn't enjoy it more, given my penchant for true crime. I don't know what it was about his style that bothered me. He was often quite funny. Oh well.

Kill Creek

"Kill Creek" by Scott Thomas was pretty good. Four different horror novelists are invited to do an interview with an online website that is dedicated to the genre. The website is run by a trust fund kid named Wainwright, and the four authors are personal heroes of his. T.C Moore writes graphic, sexual horror, Sam McGarvey is more mainstream, Daniel Slaughter writes teen horror with a Christian moral, and Sebastian Cole is the horror author legend who's been around forever. They go to a purported haunted house in Kansas and spend Halloween night there, doing the online interview. Sounds like it's pretty cheesy, right? Well it turns out the house actually *is* evil, and all four authors have some pretty big secrets to hide. It could have been a little shorter, it wandered at some points, but all in all it was a creepy story.

The Case of the Howling Dog

"The Case of the Howling Dog" is a pretty early Mason. A man named Arthur Cartwright comes to visit Mason about two things. One is his will. He wants to leave all his money and property to the woman who is living with his next door neighbor as his wife, but he wants to know if it matters if the woman is *really* the guy's wife or not. Right off the bat, that's odd. His second concern is his neighbor's dog. It's howling, and driving Mr. Cartwright bonkers (and yes, this is the same neighbor that's "married" to the woman he's leaving all his things to when he dies, so again, double odd). Mason is of course intrigued by the whole thing and gets himself neck deep in the case. Clinton Foley, the neighbor, swears his dog didn't howl, his housekeeper swears the dog didn't howl, the cook swears the dog didn't howl, etc. So is Perry's client a nut? Maybe, but he goes missing, along with Clinton Foley's "wife", not long before Clinton and the howling dog are both shot down dead. Of all the suspects, the police light on Clinton Foley's ACTUAL wife, Bessie Forbes. Seems they all used to live up in Santa Barbara, and Foley ran off with Cartwright's wife, changed his name from Forbes to Foley, and took up residence in L.A. Cartwright tracked him down and moved in next door. Bessie eventually tracked him down too and paid him a visit. Did she actually kill him? It's hard to say, Gardner kind of made it sound like she might have. There was a funny scene in the book where Perry has to hide out, so he holes up in the apartment next to Della's. She wakes him up on her way to work and tells him the water's boiling, ready for the eggs she set out, the coffee is done, the toaster is ready for the bread and there's bacon in the oven. She leaves with a warning not to look at the papers before he's had his breakfast. Of course Mason (typical man) disregards her warning and starts his eggs and then opens the paper. He overcooks his eggs, burns his toast twice, and forgets all about the bacon so he has to go out to breakfast. What on earth would you do without Della, Perry? Honestly.

Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece

I had a couple of Mason free days there, book wise, but then this one I ordered online came in and I fell off the wagon :)
In "The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece", Perry is consulted by a young woman named Edna. Edna is worried about her uncle, Peter. She lives with him, and he's in the process of getting a divorce so he can remarry. His soon to be ex-wife is causing all kinds of trouble, though, claiming that Peter tried to kill her once in her sleep. Peter and Edna claim that he sleepwalks. Perry goes to the house with a doctor friend of his, who thinks Peter is putting on a big act as far as his nervousness goes. Perry's not sure what to think. There are, first of all, about a million people living in the house. He sends a bunch of them north to Santa Barbara, to keep an eye on the ex-wife to be, and he and the doctor spend the night. When they wake up in the morning, they discover Peter's half brother has been stabbed in his sleep. Uh oh. Even more interesting is the fact that Philip, the brother,  swapped rooms the night before with Peter's shady business partner, Maddox. Everyone knew except for Peter. So was Maddox really the intended target? Why was his shady business partner and his lawyer staying at Peter's house, anyway? Were there no hotels in Los Angeles in 1936? I mean, I certainly wouldn't have given them a place to stay. At any rate. While I enjoyed the story, I must say I was disappointed with the editing on this particular copy of the book. I know they're reissues and they're done kind of on the cheap to make money, but my God. There were words missing, punctuation scattered randomly about or completely missing. It was a hot mess. Erle Stanley Gardner deserves better.

Marilyn Monroe: the Private Life of a Public Icon

I'm always curious to read about Miss Monroe. What a tragic waste of a life. There really wasn't much new here. Casillo emphasized how mentally ill she was, her crippling anxiety and her multiple foiled suicide attempts before she finally succeeded. Every woman in the world wanted to be her, every man wanted to be with her, and yet she felt so alone she took her own life. Poor Norma Jeane :(

The Reluctant Queen

I was super into Jean Plaidy's books about 15 years ago--I started visiting a library I didn't frequent as a kid, and they had all kinds of great books the two libraries I normally went to did not, like Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Masons and Jean Plaidy. I read most of her books about the early rulers of England: I remember particularly enjoying books about Eleanor of Aquitaine. This one is about Queen Anne, Richard III's wife. Their story is one of true love (at least in my opinion). Richard grew up at Middleham, which was one of Anne's wealthy father's castles. He learned to be a knight and a gentleman and the two became friends while they were still young. Richard went off to help his older brother, Edward, win the crown from Henry VI, but Anne thought of him fondly. Her older sister, Isabel, married Richard's other brother George. Anne was betrothed to Henry's son Edward when her father left the Yorks to back the Lancasters, but he was killed and the Yorks prevailed. Richard and Anne wanted to marry, but George, as Anne's legal guardian, wouldn't allow it, wanting to keep his greedy hands on the entire Warwick fortune. He drugged Anne and hid her in a cookshop in London. No one would believe she was Lady Anne Neville, until she was able to get word to Richard, who showed up one night demanding Anne's release or he'd burn the whole thing down (he wasn't playing, even Richard's enemies described him as a vicious fighter). So romantic! He truly was a white knight rescuing his lady love. They were married, and had a son named Edward. Anne's health was never terribly good, and their son was frail as well. When Edward IV died, his son was named Edward V with Richard to serve as Protector of the Realm until Edward reached his majority. Queen Elizabeth, Edward IV's widow, had other ideas and tried to wrest the Protectorship about from Richard. Richard prevailed, but then discovered that his brother and Elizabeth were not actually legally married: Edward was married to another woman who was still alive when he married Elizabeth, making their offspring bastards, which means Richard was the next legitimate heir to the throne. He is proclaimed King and Anne Queen. The book was all told from Anne's point of view, so it was very sympathetic to Richard, of course, which I was totally okay with. Plaidy portrayed Richard as reluctant to take the throne, but knowing he had to for the good of the realm. It's too bad he was killed at Bosworth: had he survived we never would have had Henry VIII. It's interesting to contemplate.

The Case of the Substitute Face

"The Case of the Substitute Face" is an early Mason. At the end of the "Case of the Lame Canary" (which I will probably skip rereading, as I just read it a little over two years ago and didn't care for it) Mason and Della are on a much needed cruise to the Orient. On their way back, one of the passengers on the ship, Mrs. Newberry, asks Mason to help her daughter, Belle. Mrs. Newberry has reason to believe her husband, Carl, has embezzled $25,000 from his company. He quit work, changed their names, and took them on this vacation. He told his wife and stepdaughter that he won the money in a lottery. Belle's a wonderful, vivacious girl who is having the time of her life, meeting eligible, rich young men. She falls for one and he likes her back, but there's a rich young woman on board who is doing everything she can to sabotage Belle's chances with this young man. Mrs. Newberry wants Mason to do everything he can to protect Belle, should Mr. Newberry be arrested once they dock. Mason starts looking into it, and before they reach the mainland, Mr. Newberry is murdered. Mrs. Newberry is left holding the gun and Della actually saw her push him overboard, so she runs off, hoping Perry won't find her so she won't have to testify against their client. Perry drops everything to hunt Della down, terrified she's been kidnapped. Paul suggests she got tired of him and took off, not wanting to be found, and I thought Perry was going to slug him. Of course Della would never leave her trusty Chief! Silly Paul.

The Case of the Long Legged Models; The Case of the Footloose Doll; The Word is Murder; The Case of the Waylaid Wolf; The Case of the Empty Tin; The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Perry is visited by a poised young woman named Stephanie Falkner. Her father was murdered some time before, leaving her 40% of a modest casino in Las Vegas. She's being pressured to sell her interest to a man named George Casselman. Perry gets a call from a client of his, Homer Garvin, Sr., who asks him to do whatever he can to help Stephanie out. Apparently his son, Homer Garvin Jr., had been dating Miss Falkner, and Sr. thought she was going to be his daughter in law someday, and bought 15% of the stake in the casino to give to her as a wedding gift. Together, he and Stephanie have over 50%. Unfortunately, Jr. has just married a showgirl he barley knows. When Casselman is found murdered, there are too many clues, too many suspects, and too many guns: Garvin Sr. bought three identical guns, gave one to Jr., and kept two for himself. *One* of those guns is the murder weapon, but is it Jr.'s, or the did Mason switch guns right under Tragg's nose?
It never ceases to amaze me in these books how many times people make appointments to see people in the middle of the night. Casselman had like, four, appointments between eleven and midnight. He was literally shuffling people out the back door while inviting others in the front. It gave Perry plenty of red herrings to work with!

Mildred Crest has had a terrible day. She gets a phone call at work from her fiance: not only is he calling off their engagement, he's about to be pinched for embezzlement and is fleeing town. Mildred is horrified and embarrassed. Her boss sends her home for the day, since she's clearly not feeling well, and Mildred impetuously decides to leave town. She cleans out her savings account, hops in her car, and starts driving. She doesn't have a destination in mind, she just needs to get out of Oceanside and clear her head. At a gas station, a young woman who introduces herself as Fern Driscoll asks if Mildred will give her a ride. Mildred tells her she doesn't know where she's going, and Fern says that suits her fine. Mildred lets her in the car, and as they drive Fern tells her a little of her story: she's from the Midwest, she's in a terrible bind, and she wants to kill herself. She taunts Mildred to drive the car off the steep cliff of the hill they're climbing. Mildred is nonplussed when Fern grabs the wheel and deliberately crashes the car. Mildred manages to escape, but Fern is crushed to death instantly. Mildred makes a bold decision: she'll take the dead woman's identity and start over. She switches purses and accidentally lights the car on fire, then hightails it out of there.
Mildred makes it to L.A., where she starts work as a secretary under the name Fern Driscoll in the same building where Mason has his office. The papers report Mildred Crest died in a car accident, and also that she was two months' pregnant. Mildred is tracked down by a would be blackmailer who has discovered she's not Fern, and she consults with Mason. When the blackmailer is stabbed with an ice pick and dies, Mildred is not only on the hook for his murder but for stealing Fern's identity. The "Long Legged Models" was about the musical guns, this one was about the musical ice picks. There were six instead of three, which made it really fun trying to keep track of which ice pick was the real murder weapon!

I took a break from Mason to read Anthony Horowitz's newest, "The Word is Murder". He wrote himself into the story, which is usually a bad idea (Stephen King, I'm looking at you) but it worked quite well in this case, he carried it off brilliantly. Diana Cowper visits a funeral parlor to make arrangements for her own funeral. Just in time, too, she's murdered that evening. Former Detective Hawthorne approaches Horowitz with a deal for him: Horowitz can join him on his quest to catch the killer and then write a book about it, and they can split the profits. Horowitz is hesitant at first, but something about the case appeals to him, so he agrees. It turns out Diana accidentally killed a little boy almost ten years earlier while driving without her glasses. She crippled his twin brother, and got off with a slap on the wrist from the judge. Her son is a famous actor, living out in Hollywood, and when he comes home for his mother's funeral, he is murdered that afternoon. There were plenty of red herrings all over the place: just when I thought I had it figured out, I was proved wrong. Which was great! I enjoyed it a lot.

Back to Mason. Arlene Ferris is working late one night, and when she goes to leave her car won't start. Luckily, the dashing playboy son of the owner, Loring Lamont, happens by and offers her a ride home. Arlene accepts. After she's in the car, he remembers he promised to take some important papers out to someone at his father's country place and promises Arlene it won't take long, and he'll take her out to dinner afterwards to make up for it. Arlene reluctantly agrees. They get to the country place and no one's there, so Lamont makes a few phone calls and gets angry when he finds out the man's been delayed and his father expects him to wait for him. Arlene is agreeable, though, and they make dinner, turn on some music, have some drinks. Then Lamont gets down to what he really wants. Arlene is offended and runs out of the house in a desperate attempt to protect her virtue. Lamont chases after her in his car and gets out to follow her on foot. Arlene manages to backtrack and jumps in his car (silly boy left the keys in it) and takes off. She parks in front of his apartment building in front of a fire hydrant, hoping he gets towed, and takes a cab home. She calls her good friend, Madge (who, incidentally, got Arlene the job at Lamont's business simply by making a phone call, which tells you something about Madge's connection to the Lamonts) to tell her what happened. Madge is properly sympathetic. Arlene goes to visit Mason the next day to tell him what happened and figure out if there's anything they can do about Lamont. She knows she's not the only girl he's tried this on, and she wants to stop him. Well, someone stopped Lamont for good the night before: he was found murdered, with the knife still in his back.
There were some great scenes in this one with Mason and Arlene's friend Madge. It was interesting to see him flirting with someone besides Della.

This is the exact copy I own of the "Case of the Empty Tin" and the "Case of the Drowsy Mosquito". I absolutely love how cheesy and silly the cover is, so I had to include it.
I read the "Empty Tin" first (it's from 1941, "Mosquito" is 1943. Why "Mosquito" is first I don't know. I hate when publishers do that. Almost all of my Mason's are like that, since most of the ones I own are 2 in 1s). Housewife and mother extraordinaire Florence Gentrie spies an empty tin on her shelf of preserves in the cellar that she knows darn well wasn't there before. Why would anyone put an empty tin on a shelf, all sealed up? She tosses it in the scrap bin, but her sister in law, spinster Rebecca, thinks it's quite a mystery and makes a big deal out of puzzling it out. Florence doesn't have time for such nonsense: she has a big house to run, a servant to look after, three children, and a husband, not to mention a boarder and a pesky sister in law. That night, the household is woken up by a gunshot. Someone was shot at the house next door, but the tenant and his housekeeper have both disappeared. Coincidentally, one of Mason's clients lives on the second floor of the house, the shooting happened in the downstairs apartment. His client is a recluse who is in hiding and doesn't want publicity, so he begs Mason to solve the crime and keep him out of it. Mason starts investigating and he too is puzzled by the empty tin, especially when they find the lid has what appears to be a secret code etched into it. Fun! There's a great scene where Mason poses as Tragg's brother up in San Francisco.

And finally, "The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito". Salty Bowers comes to Mason for his friend, Banning Clarke. He and Banning were prospectors together, and Banning got rich and used his money to buy a big mansion by the ocean and got married. It nearly killed him, according to Salty. Banning was meant for the outdoor life, and living indoors has weakened his heart. He has a nurse on premises as well as a housekeeper. Mason and Della go with Salty to pay a visit to Banning and find him camping out in a cactus garden away from the main house. It was Salty's idea, to restore Banning to health, and it seems to be working. Since his wife died almost two years earlier, Banning has been eager to return to the desert with Salty and continue their prospecting. Banning's household is an odd one. His former mother in law and brother in law live in the main house. When his wife died, she left everything to them, including the stock in his mining company Banning put in her name. So now he shares the company with them. The live in housekeeper, her husband and daughter all live there, as well as his nurse. Banning wants Mason to represent the housekeeper's husband in a fraud suit brought on by his former brother in law. The brother in law, Jim, claims the old prospector salted a mine to get him to buy it and it's worthless. The whole cast of colorful characters appeals to Mason, and he agrees.
Jim and his mother are poisoned that night, seemingly by arsenic, but thanks to the fact that the nurse, Velma, was on hand they pull through. Mason and Della come to take care of some business, and they are poisoned! Luckily, they pull through as well (seriously, why try to kill a bunch of people with arsenic when there's a nurse in the house?). Unfortunately, Banning Clarke isn't as lucky. Even though he's dying from arsenic poisoning, someone shoots him. Overkill, as they say. It actually reminded me a bit of Kurt Cobain's demise. Drugs or guns, people. You don't need both.
At any rate, there were no courtroom scenes in this one ("The Empty Tin" didn't have any, either) but it was still fun. Mason proposes to Della in the end, but she turns him down, knowing full well he doesn't want a wife and to settle down, but his brush with death made him think he did.
This book makes me want to go camping, which is something I never thought I'd say :)

The Case of the Screaming Woman

"The Case of the Screaming Woman" is the one with the doctor who lives in the nosiest neighborhood in all mankind. Literally everyone sits by their windows with binoculars, spying on everyone else. And there's no less than four different people who run in and out of the doctor's house at 11 o'clock at night. That poor doctor should have bought a Rottweiler or something.
Dr. Babb runs a baby clinic. Pregnant, unwed women come to him and he checks them into the hospital, along with a married woman who wants a child. The married woman leaves with a child that is listed as her's, and the unwed woman goes on her merry way. Someone is keen to get their hands on Dr. Babb's notebook, detailing all the wealthy, powerful people he's helped have babies. Perry's client is one of the husbands who is desperate to protect his young son from finding out he was adopted. John Kirby was seen leaving the doctor's house shortly before his body was discovered, and he checked a young lady into a motel, registering as man and wife, but then left the woman alone. The prosecution contends that Kirby and this young lady conspired together to kill Dr. Babb. Perry makes a right fool out of Burger in the courtroom (naturally) by having Burger's own witness prove Kirby was innocent. It was a fun courtroom scene.

Harper; The Case of the Lucky Loser

I know, a non Perry Mason book! It was a super short, quick read, which was good, because it was terrible.
I hate saying that about any book. I know how hard the author worked, I understand their hopes and dreams about getting their work published and having people read it. But, unfortunately, some books just aren't that good, and this was one of them.
I wanted to read it because first of all, it's horror, and second of all, it takes place in a fictional Southern California town called Harper, which is near "Newland Beach" and "Huntingdon" (amazingly enough, he used Laguna Beach without trying to disguise it). The town of Harper was built on an old decommissioned military base where a strange guy posing as a cook poisoned and killed some people. The people who lived in Harper don't want to talk about the strange things they saw there, which were really not scary, at least not how they were described. The main character, Gordon, grew up in Harper and relates how three of his preschool friends were killed by weird flying plastic pieces, later two of his school mates died in his house, one strangled by a rubber mask, the other by a lamp shade. His older sister was kidnapped by a gorilla but managed to get away. The neighbor's house fell into a huge sinkhole, and a guy got his arm ripped off by a creature with a torch for a head. His grandparents (who lived next door) eventually moved, his parents were permanently traumatized. It was all very nonsensical, even for a horror book
 

Back to the good stuff. Mason is asked by a woman on the phone to go watch a case in court, and she'll pay him for his opinion of a witness. Mason obliges (mostly out of curiosity) and sees the tail end of a hit and run case. Ted Balfour is convicted of running down and accidentally killing an unidentified man while driving drunk. When Mason talks to his client, he discovers she's the secretary to Ted's wealthy uncle. She's also in love with young Ted, but doesn't dare say so. Mason tells her he thinks the main witness was lying, but there's not much that can be done now.
The next day Mason gets a call from Ted's other uncle, Guthrie, asking him to take over representing Ted. He's sending his wife, Dorla, in to speak to him, as Guthrie is still down in Mexico. There was a lot going on in this book, including the corpse, who isn't who anyone thought he was supposed to be. Seriously, why doesn't the prosecution ever check these things out? Dental records don't match? No difference. Fingerprints aren't the same? Eh. They shrug it off. Gardner really makes the D. A. look like a bunch of fools.

The Case of the Glamorous Ghost

"The Case of the Glamorous Ghost" was a fun one. Mason comes into work one morning and Della asks him if he's seen the papers. Mason says no, so she tells him the fantastic story of a young woman running around a park the night before in just a light raincoat who claims she's lost her memory (a couple were making out in the park, and the female chased this girl with a tire iron because she thought she was coming onto her boyfriend). The paper published her picture in the hopes that someone would recognize her and claim her. And, apparently, it worked because her half-sister, Olga, is in the waiting room. Intrigued, Mason has Olga come in and talk to him. Olga tells him her younger half-sister, Eleanor, is a wild girl who has used amnesia to get out of scrapes in the past. Apparently Eleanor claimed she was running off with her boyfriend, Douglas Hepner, and they were married in Arizona. This happened two weeks earlier. Olga hadn't heard a word from her sister since, until she showed up nearly naked in the park. Mason goes with her to the hospital to ID her sister, and it is Eleanor. Mason also feels it would be prudent to put Eleanor somewhere out of circulation for a bit, until he can get to the bottom of things and has a friendly doctor tuck her away anonymously in a sanitarium.
Then Douglas Hepner's body turns up in the park, with Eleanor's gun lying beside it.
That complicates things a bit.
There was all kinds of fun sidetracks with gem smuggling. The best part was (of course) a courtroom scene, when Perry finally drags out of a witness that he was hiding in a woman's closet, watching her dress. When Mason asked him why he didn't leave the apartment while the woman was in the bath, the man claimed he was confused. No kidding, Perry quips dryly (I'm paraphrasing). It was a laugh out loud moment.

The Case of the Bigamous Spouse; The Case of the Fugitive Nurse; The Case of the Queenly Contestant; The Case of the Lazy Lover; The Case of the Daring Decoy

Okay, I know it looks like a lot, but honestly, these books are pretty short and they're quick reads because they're so fast paced. In "The Case of the Bigamous Spouse", Perry's client, Gwynn, discovers her friend (and roommate) Nell's husband has another wife. She goes to Perry because she thinks Felton, the husband, knows that she knows and is trying to kill her. He poisoned her cocktail, but because it tasted funny, Gwynn dumped it out without drinking it. Felton is murdered, and Gwynn is left holding the murder weapon. Her story of how she got the gun is pretty far-fetched, even for Perry. In the end of course Gwynn is innocent (spoiler: Nell did it) but I think he made a mistake (or I misunderstood when I read it, that's probably more likely). See, Gwynn's story is that as she was leaving the house where Felton lived with his other wife, she was stopped by a stranded motorist who claimed he was a police officer and needed her to drive him to a service station. He gave Gwynn his gun so if he tried anything she could use it on him. Gwynn reluctantly took him into her car and drove him to a gas station, where he jumped out of the car and disappeared. Gwynn went home and told Nell the story and showed her the gun. Nell noticed there was an empty shell casing in the gun, meaning it had been fired. Now, according to Nell, she drugged Gwynn, took the gun, and went back and shot her husband. But...the empty casing? Gwynn said Nell pointed it out to her and she saw it, but if she did then the gun should have been fully loaded, since no one had killed Felton yet. The timing seemed all off, too. Oh well. It was still good.

The "Case of the Fugitive Nurse" had one of the funniest courtroom scenes yet. Dr. Malden is presumed killed when his private plane crashes on its way to Salt Lake City. The only body in the plane is burned beyond recognition. Dr. Malden's wife, Steffanie, is accused of drugging Dr. Malden's whisky so he would fall asleep while piloting the plane and crash it. There was a lot going on in this book as far as illegal drugs, embezzlement, a nurse girlfriend, a hermit best friend, and a shady chauffeur. In court, Perry manages to get the prosecution's witness to admit the dental records of the corpse don't match the dental records of Dr. Malden. The D.A. tries to brush it off like it doesn't matter, but the judge is nonplussed. It was pretty enjoyable to read. Perry is wrong about who the corpse really was, but he was right that Dr. Malden ran off with his girlfriend and took advantage of the plane crash to disappear. Who the corpse really was felt very rushed on and kind of implausible (how many people know how to pilot planes? In this book, literally everyone. I know exactly one person in real life). Worth it for the courtroom bits alone, though.

In "The Case of the Queenly Contestant", Mason is visited by a woman who is desperate to keep her past a secret. As a young woman, she won a beauty contest and left her Midwest hometown to go to Hollywood. She made some screen tests, but nothing came of them and she returned to her small town. She ended up pregnant while in a relationship with the son of the wealthiest man in town. The son was shipped off to Europe and she was given a thousand dollars and told to get it taken care of. Since it was the 1940s (this book was published in 1967, I think) she was ashamed and embarrassed and fled town. She got a job as a housekeeper with a nice, childless couple. Once her condition became apparent, the wife offered to adopt the child. Ellen checked in to the hospital under the wife's name and gave birth to a son, Wight. Wight was raised by his adoptive parents and thought Ellen was an old family friend, but after the parents die in a car crash, she told him the truth. Now Wight's biological father, the sole heir to the business and two million dollars, is missing and presumed dead after a yachting accident. He left everything to his half-brothers, unless it's shown that he has an illegitimate child somewhere. At first Ellen doesn't want to be found, but then she decides Wight deserves his due and wants Mason's help proving Wight is really Harmon's son. The only person who can prove it, the nurse who attended Ellen when she gave birth, is murdered, complicating matters.
This book couldn't be written now, of course, because a simple paternity test would have cleared the whole thing up.

Onto the "Case of the Lazy Lover". This is the one that has the most implausible (and that's really saying something) ending ever. I give Gardner a lot of leeway, because his dialogue and courtroom scenes are so much fun, and I love Mason, Della, and Paul, but my goodness. This one was just ridiculous. Perry gets not one but two checks in the mail for $2,500 each from a Lola Allred. There's no accompanying note, so Mason has no idea what she wants, but when he deposits the checks the bank discovers one is a very clever forgery but the other one is legit. Later, he receives a letter from Lola asking him to take care of her daughter, Patricia, if anything should come up. Mason sets Drake to tracking Lola and her daughter down and finds them both. Turns out Lola is married to a very tricky businessman named Bertrand, who's in the middle of a nasty lawsuit. His business partner, Fleetwood, was supposedly hit when Patricia turned into the driveway and clipped a hedge and is now suffering from amnesia. Allred suggests Lola take him away somewhere so he can be kept quiet until he recovers his memory, and Lola does. Allred then spreads the rumor around town that Fleetwood ran off with his wife. Then Allred turns up dead. Mason of course finally get to the bottom of things, and it turns out...wait for it...a woman used a POLE VAULT to create footprints to show a woman running back to a car so they could frame Lola for the murder of her husband. Yes, a pole vault. He says it with a straight face. Gotta love it :)

"The Case of the Daring Decoy" was a lot of fun, too. Mason is contacted by a man named Jerry Conway. Conway is currently locked in a proxy battle for control of Texas Global, and he's afraid he's just been framed for something. He tells Mason a fantastic story about a woman named Rosalind calling him up to get him the secret list of people who've sent his rival, Gifford Farrell, their proxies. Rosalind makes him run all around, wait at pay phones, etc., before finally sending him to a hotel where he's to ask for a message at the desk. The clerk gives him an envelope containing a room key. When Conway goes up there, he finds a girl in just her underwear with a mudpack on her face and her hair up in a towel. She grabs a gun out of the desk and points it at him, shaking so bad he's afraid she'd going to pull the trigger on accident. He gets the gun away from her and splits. Mason is sure the gun was used for a murder, and sure enough, a dead body turns up in that room. It's not the girl Conway saw, but a different one. And it's not the murder weapon, either. Hmmm. Things get pretty complicated, but there's some fun scenes with Paul Drake and an elevator girl named Myrtle.

Private Lives of the Tudors; The Case of the Curious Bride

One I forgot to write about yesterday, Tracy Borman's "The Private Lives of the Tudors". It was really interesting, about the more mundane aspects of their lives, like what kind of clothing they wore, how they went to the bathroom, what they ate. The Groom of the Stool, which was a very coveted position, is actually exactly what it sounds like: someone who went into the stool closet (or bathroom) with the King and wiped. Yuck times ten. I get why people wanted to do it, though, the King was literally never, ever alone any other time, and it was a good opportunity for someone to chat him up. Still. Even if I *could* have someone do that for me, I don't think I would want to.

And then one I finished rereading last night. A woman comes into Mason's office, asking for advice for "a friend" who wants to know if her marriage is legal. Perry sees through that charade immediately and wounds her pride, so much that she storms out, leaving behind her purse. When he and Della open it, they discover a gun. Hmm. Turns out the young lady, Rhoda, was married to a con artist name Moxley. Moxley took her life savings and disappeared. Rhoda heard he died in a plane crash, so she decided she was free to remarry. She didn't really choose any better the second time around: Carl Montaine is the only son of a wealthy man, but he's a wimpy little Daddy's boy. Rhoda is sure she can make a man out of him, though. Unfortunately, her first husband has reappeared, demanding blackmail money to keep the Montaine name out of the scandal rags. Before Mason can act, Moxley is murdered and it looks like Rhoda did it. Mason pulled some fast and loose things with doorbells in court, it was pretty entertaining. Of course in the end we find out Rhoda wasn't guilty even though she thought she'd murdered Moxley (conveniently, the power went out at the exact time of the murder, so she didn't realize she wasn't alone in the room with him).

Fatal Throne; The Visitors; Walking Alone; Werewolf of Bamberg; The Case of the Terrified Typist; The Case of the Grinning Gorilla; The Case of the Velvet Claws

Whew, I knew I was behind but holy cow, I had no idea how bad! And I'm sure I missed one or two, I'll have to double-check my records. At any rate, let's get this done!
"Fatal Throne" was written by various YA authors. It was an interesting conceit: each one picked a wife of Henry VIII and wrote her story, with whining, petulant Henry rebutting after each chapter. No real new revelations here (I think even casual fans of the Tudors would know it all) but it was still nicely written and a quick read.

I am loving the current resurgence in horror fiction popularity! There are so many good books coming out that I can't wait to read. This one was super creepy, I enjoyed it. Middle aged siblings Marion and John live together in their ancestral family home. They have "family money", so neither of them has to work. Marion has actually never held a job, while John lost his job teaching after getting into trouble with an underage student. At first I felt very sorry for Marion, she seemed very sad and pathetic, but it didn't take long before you realize she isn't as innocent as she seems. Her brother is even worse, but at least I knew from the start he was a slimeball.

Bentley Little's collection of short stories was actually better than I thought it would be. It's a good format for him, I think. Most of this collection was written in the early 1980s, and then the last few were from 2016-2017. They were all at least decent, and some were pretty good. There was one story, about a bullied girl who finds she has the power to make bad things happen to her bullies simply by writing it down in a special book resonated with me :)

I think I'm finally caught up on the Hangman's Daughter books by Oliver Potzsch. Jakob and his family travel to Bamberg for his younger brother, Bartl's, wedding. Jakob and Bartl haven't spoken in years, and neither of them is anxious to mend the rift, but their family would like them to. Simon is eager to consult with a medical colleague but gets pulled into a strange case. The city of Bamberg seems to be being stalked by a werewolf, and the citizens are in a panic as the dead bodies turn up. Barbara, fed up with her family, runs away to join a troupe of actors and is heartbroken when one is arrested on suspicion of being the werewolf and locked up. As usual, a lot going on but it was very well done and all tied together.

And now it's time for the rereads! I don't know what it is about this time of year. No matter how many library books I have checked out, no matter how many of my own books I've bought and never read, I always have the urge to reread some of my old favorites. This year it's Perry Mason, I guess. Could be worse. "The Case of the Terrified Typist" starts off with Perry needing a typist and fast. When a girl shows up at their office who can type like lightening, he puts her to work, only to discover she's smuggling diamonds. Whoops. Of course she wasn't really guilty of anything (Perry's clients never are) but it was a fun ride to get to the conclusion.

"The Case of the Grinning Gorilla" has a great scene with Perry being chased by a crazed gorilla in a mansion while the gorilla's owner lies dead, having been stabbed. Unfortunately, the gorilla didn't kill him, although he certainly had cause to: the owner was performing cruel experiments on the beasts he had in captivity, trying to induce them to homicide. What a whacko. Perry's client, the woman accused of murder, was fired by the guy for stealing. When Perry proved she didn't steal anything, the guy rewrote his will, leaving her a good sum of money to apologize for besmirching her good name, which, of course, the D.A. interprets as motive.

"The Case of the Velvet Claws" is the first Perry Mason mystery. Perry takes on a client that Della absolutely cannot stand and is positive she is going to get Perry into a lot of hot water (spoiler alert: Della is right. Life lesson, folks. Listen to Della). Eva Belter is worried her husband will find out about her boyfriend after they were seen together in a night club. She's afraid a local scandal rag will blackmail her and wants Perry to handle it. Perry refuses to pay blackmail and decides to get to the bottom of the thing by determining who owns the rag. Turns out it's Eva's husband, George. Hmm, the plot thickens! George is murdered and Eva basically throws Perry under the bus. The solution to the murder was wildly improbable, but not nearly as crazy as some of Mason's later adventures.