The Case Of The Gilded Lily – Erle Stanley Gardner

When a blackmailer is found dead in a motor lodge, Perry Mason tries to stay a step ahead of the police while trying to determine if his client, or his client’s wife, were responsible.  After his client is arrested, Perry, along with Della Street and Paul Drake, have to get to the bottom of the case: who killed the blackmailer, who was his partner, and who is framing his client and his wife.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Gilded Lily, originally published in 1956, is the 50th entry in his Perry Mason series, the sixth of six novels re-released last year in conjunction with the new adaptation on HBO, and the fifth that I’ve read this year. This was not the best entry in this series that I’ve read, but does spend plenty of time in court, where Perry Mason and Hamilton Burger are much more adversarial than they are in the classic TV series.  I look forward to seeing the TV adaptation from the Raymond Burr version of the show, the 34th episode of its first season, so I can compare the filmed version with the original.