When 2 separate checks arrive at Perry Mason’s office from a woman he has never met and with no explanation as to what they are for, the lawyer gets dragged into an investigation, searching for the woman and trying to find out why she has hired him.  When her husband winds up dead and she is charged with the crime, Perry has to find out what really happened in order to set his client free.

The Case of the Lazy Lover is the 30th entry in Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series and is much closer to what would eventually show up on screen in the 1950s series than in the first entry, which was the only other one I had read.  Because of this, I managed to hear Raymond Burr’s voice in my head as I read the book, which I’m sure helped to enrich my experience.  Turns out that this story was adapted for an episode of the show during its first season, so I’d like to catch that sometime soon and compare the filmed version with the original.

Thanks to the new HBO series, a number of the old Perry Mason novels have been republished.  This is the only one I have picked up to date, but I’ll have my eyes open for more.