When a publisher comes to him to investigate a woman who has placed a questionable ad in his magazine, Perry Mason gets himself involved in a contested will and, ultimately, a murder case.  When his new client is charged with the murder of the one witness threatening to scuttle her claims on an inheritance, he needs to figure out who the real killer is without putting his own neck on the line.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Lonely Heiress, originally published in 1948, is the 31st entry in his Perry Mason series and the second of six novels re-released last year in conjunction with the new adaptation on HBO.  While this tale wasn’t my favorite of what I’ve read so far, it was adapted for an episode of the Raymond Burr version of the show during its first season, so I’d like to catch that sometime soon and compare the filmed version with the original.