Who was that masked woman? That's not the only question plaguing the perpetually inquiring mind of Perry Mason. Did the wealthy Fremont C. Sabin divorce his wife before his untimely death? That's the multimillion-dollar question. And the right answer will mean a windfall for either the dead man's angry son or headstrong widow. Each has accused the other of destroying Sabin's willβand murdering Sabin. But with no document declaring who the affable eccentric intended to leave his fortune to, Perry Mason faces a particularly prickly puzzle.
Even more puzzling, however, is the talking parrot. Casanova was Fremont Sabin's beloved pet. But the bird found at the crime scene proves to be a foul-mouthed impostor. No one loves a good mystery more than Mason--but being asked to represent a client who's concealing her identity, not to mention the particulars of her case, has given even the legendary legal eagle a case of ruffled feathers.
About the Author
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Erle Stanley Gardner left school in 1909 and attended Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana for just one month before he was suspended for focusing more on his hobby of boxing than his academic studies. Soon after, he settled in California, where he taught himself the law and passed the state bar exam in 1911. The practise of law never held much interest for him, however, apart from as it pertained to trial strategy, and in his spare time he began to write for the pulp magazines that gave Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler their start. Not long after the publication of his first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, featuring Perry Mason, he gave up his legal practice to write full time. He had one daughter, Grace, with his first wife, Natalie, from whom he later separated. In 1968 Gardner married his long-term secretary, Agnes Jean Bethell, whom he professed to be the real 'Della Street', Perry Mason's sole (although unacknowledged) love interest. He was one of the most successful authors of all time and at the time of his death, in Temecula, California in 1970, is said to have had 135 million copies of his books in print in America alone.