Friday, October 9, 2015

Perry Mason Gets Dragged into a Mystery by a Lame Bird

In this outing, Perry gets suckered into taking a divorce case when a young woman shows up in his office carrying a cage with a lame canary in it.

Under normal circumstances of course , Perry would never touch something as boring as a routine divorce suit and the woman insists that the lame canary is incidental to the whole business and that she just happened to have it along with her. But Perry is so damned curious about the injured bird that he takes the woman's case against his better judgment.

Happily for Perry--and for the reader--this messy divorce case soon turns into a nasty murder and, naturally, Perry's client is the principal suspect. Even worse, the cops take possession of the poor canary and God only knows what's going to happen to it.

As is always the case in these books, things get terribly convoluted. But happily, Perry is on the case assisted by Della Street, his beautiful and efficient secretary, and by Paul Drake, who continues to run the most amazing detective agency in all of crime fiction. Mason can call at any hour of the day or night with a list of 147 people who need to be followed 24/7 and reams of information that need to be dug up within the hour. Drake always has enough operatives hanging around the office to get the job done and he always comes up with the information that Perry desperately needs. One can only marvel at what the guy might have been able to do with a high speed Internet connection!

This book first appeared seventy-eight years ago and the times, as they say, have definitely changed. Still these books are always a lot of fun--a nice way to while away an evening with a glass of good wine in hand.

No comments:

Post a Comment