Perry Mason Must Solve a Convoluted Case Involving a Careless Kitten

Not to be confused with The Case of the Caretaker's Cat, this is the twenty-first entry in the Perry Mason series, first published in 1942. As the book opens a young woman named Helen Kendal receives a mysterious phone call from a man claiming to be her beloved uncle, Franklin Shore, who disappeared ten years earlier. Shore, a prosperous banker, simply disappeared from his desk one night while in the middle of writing a check, and hasn't been seen or heard from since, save for a postcard that he sent to young Helen from Florida.

Uncle Franklin's wife, a grizzled old battle axe named Matilda, claims that Franklin ran off with a younger woman and that she's hated him ever since. She refuses to divorce him and insists that one day he will come crawling back to her and she will gleefully take her revenge. In the meantime, she also refuses to petition the court to declare him dead so that his will can be probated. This means that poor young Helen, who's in line for $20,000 in the will, can't afford to kiss off Aunt Matilda and marry the soldier that she loves.

The man claiming to be Uncle Franklin wants Helen to contact Perry Mason and bring him to meet a man who will then lead the two of them to him. It's all very mysterious and hush-hush, and Mason, who loves a good mystery, naturally agrees. In fairly short order, someone will be murdered; Helen's poor little cat will be poisoned, and Helen's miserable Aunt Matilda will also apparently be poisoned. Nobody cares about Aunt Matilda, of course, but we're all rooting for the poor little kitten to make a speedy and full recovery.

The plot of this novel is even more convoluted than usual for these books. Naturally, Perry will get into deep trouble and the nasty D.A., Hamilton Burger, will gleefully insist that this time he has Perry dead to rights and will be sending him to jail. Readers will dislike Burger even more than they dislike Aunt Matilda and will be thrilled to see Perry throttle the D.A. again. (This gives nothing away. If anyone reads one of these books expecting that Mason might actually lose a case, then they are clearly reading the wrong series.)

The solution to this all these developments will leave any logical reader shaking his or her head at the tangled web that Gardner has woven here and at the way he tries to make some sense out of it at the end. It simply can't be done, but still, it's always fun to watch Perry in action, and this is a quick, entertaining read.