The Case of the One Eyed Witness; The Case of the Hesitant Hostess

 

This was a pretty fun one. Perry and Della are dining at a new nightclub Paul recommended (when does Paul have time to go out? Seriously) when Perry receives a mysterious phone call from a woman who refuses to give her name and sounds perfectly terrified. An envelope arrives for him with some money and a cryptic newspaper clipping. To add to the confusion, the cigarette girl at the club gives him a sob story about having her baby taken away from her and put up for adoption, stating that she is part Japanese. 

The newspaper clipping leads them to a man named Carlin. Perry puts Paul on the case, asking him to have operatives shadow the house. When a fire starts, the police are immediately suspicious because Perry and Paul are involved (honestly I don't blame them). It appears as if Carlin perished in the fire. Then a sketchy relator is murdered in his home and his wife patches together a terrible alibi that is easily refuted by a eyewitness. Perry defends the wife, even though she insists she isn't the one who sent him the retainer. At first I thought Perry was going to turn the witness around and show she was mistaken (there was a lot of buildup about glasses and poor eyesight), but no, she was right. The actual conclusion was quite a bit twistier. 

"The Case of the Hesitant Hostess" started out in the courtroom, and I'm not sure I've read a Mason mystery that started that way. Perry is defending Albert Brogan for a stick up job pro bono. Albert's niece, Mary, shows up and insists that her uncle is innocent. The two people in the car that were robbed are clearly lying, but Perry isn't having any luck proving that they perjured themselves. His one witness, Inez Kaylor, vanishes before she can testify. There was a lot of time spent trying to find out if Inez was one person or two (and a fun scene with Perry trying to fight off the advances of a very persistent hostess in the back of a limo).  When a young woman turns up dead, the DA decides to just prosecute Brogan for that, too, since he's already in custody. 

There were some fun moments, and shockingly the solution involved gambling, organized crime, and drugs. Plus Perry and Della running off to Vegas to get married (they didn't, really, but that's what they wanted everyone to think).