The Case of the Velvet Claws

When a man’s past threatens his family’s future there’s only one way to turn — to Perry Mason

Harlow Bissinger Bancroft, head of a vast corporate empire and a happily married man, had a battery of lawyers — not one of any use to him in his present situation.

That’s why he sat facing Perry Mason, his air of authority vanished, a deeply disturbed man.

“There are three ways of dealing with a blackmailer,” Mason told him, “but only one should concern you — tell him to go jump in the lake.”

The blackmailer was found the lake, all right, but he’d not had a chance to jump in it for he was as dead as the proverbial mackerel.

“What prominent lawyer received the mitten in front of his office building last night? Who was the mysterious blonde spitfire who swung one from the hip and left him groggy...?”

That gossip columnist knew that Perry Mason was the lawyer. But Mason himself didn’t know who the girl was... and he wanted to.

She had climbed down the fire escape from the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company — right into Mason’s office on the floor below. After a story which neither believed, she ran away. And the next day Ed Garvin came to see the lawyer.

Garvin said didn’t know the girl. He was just crazy about his new bride... but he want Mason to find out whether or not he had two wives. He, himself, didn’t quite know.

Perry Mason takes the case that soon involves murder and reaches a climax in one of the most brilliant courtroom scenes of Mason’s career.

It takes talent to kill two birds with one stone... but it takes genius (Erle Stanley Gardner variety) to make three bull’s-eyes with one arrow.

This Perry Mason mystery is a tantalizing triple-decker.

One threesome comprises three glamorous ladies — all long-legged models with ambitions that range from keeping the home fires burning to putting the home fires out.

Another trio is a far-from-pleasant collection of small metal objects called guns.

Finally, the favorite triumvirate of mystery readers around the world: Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake. This is one of Mason’s most absorbing cases — meaning sensational action all the way, with a fabulous courtroom climax.

“You’ll have a tombstone on your chest, roses growin’ all around it, too, if you tie into that pair,” Mugs Magoo had warned Paul Pry. But the famous gang buster only laughed as he planned his next baffling deal — muscling artists were monkey meat to him.

Comely hula dancers go “around the island,” lanky cowboys go around the town, and the police go round and round, when Lester Leith interests himself in the mystifying case of the drugged guard.

The last of the Perry Mason mysteries features the headlong pace, wealth of red herrings, and sizzling courtroom scene characterizing the best of Gardner.

There was something phony about the girl her cheap coat didn’t go with her smartly tailored suit, her hair-do didn’t go with her beautifully kept hands — and her face didn’t go with her story.

It didn’t take Mason long to figure out that this so-called Sylvia Farr was no poor little girl from the country in search of her missing sister, but was indeed sister Mae herself — a girl in trouble of some sort, deep trouble.

So Perry went to bat and soon found himself in a hot ball game — one called murder.

Charles Ashton is a cranky old caretaker with one friend in the world: his Persian cat, Clinker. Samuel Laxter, heir to his former employer, wants him to get rid of his pet. By the codicils of his late employer’s will, Charles can’t be fired, but Clinker has no such job security; Ashton retains Perry Mason to arbitrate on his behalf. Then the murders begin…

“Could you be convicted of murder if there was no corpse?” she wanted to know, and said she was only curious. This was the first of many lies that Perry Mason was to encounter in the case of The People vs. Rhonda Montaine…

The nervous Arthur Cartright came to Perry Mason about a neighbor’s noisy dog that kept him too distracted to sleep at night. Mason thought the case almost too trivial to take, but before long he was deeply involved in a case involving a poisoned police dog, a missing wife, a talented housekeeper, and murder…

Like many other young women, Marjorie Clune has fallen victim to a con artist who promotes bogus beauty pageants in small California towns. “The Girl with the Lucky Legs” is promised a Hollywood contract, but in fact, there is no contract, and the promoter absconds with the promotional money put up by local merchants. Cheated of her triumph, Marjorie has fled her hometown in shame to try to prove herself in Hollywood. Perry Mason is hired to bring her back. But when the unscrupulous pageant promoter is found dead, Marjorie becomes the prime suspect in his murder…