Legal Detective

Tony Colletti, a good suburban cop and father of a child with autism, finds himself drawn into the controversy over the apparent but rarely acknowledged connection between childhood vaccines and autism. His quest to uncover the truth forces him to risk all he holds dear while confronting corrupt government officials, the powerful pharmaceutical industry, and disturbing elements of his own past. Even while holding down his job and dealing with family crises, Colletti spearheads the drive to contend with industrial espionage, Russian gangsters, and sexual predators.

As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and “peace walls” segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it’s as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it’s a good time for Brennan’s cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government. But then a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime.

When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard's funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery.

Wealthy businessman Hartley Bassett has killed himself. There's a typewritten suicide note and three guns lying near his body. But for Perry Mason, that's evidence overkill. He knows there has been trouble in Bassett's life. His wife wants out, his stepson hates him, an embezzler can't pay him back - and there's the man with a glass eye who hired Perry Mason even before his glass eye went missing and was found in the hands of the deceased.

Who killed Philip Rease? Peter Kent was known to be a sleepwalker and a bloodstained knife was found under his pillow. There were people who would like to see Peter Kent out of the way, but would they frame him for murder? And would that explain the reason for Rease's death? It was another case full of traps for Perry Mason.

Who was that masked woman? That was the question plaguing Perry Mason. No one loves a good mystery more than Mason - but being asked to represent a client who is concealing her identity, not to mention the particulars of her case, has given even the legendary legal eagle a case of ruffled feathers. Yet the intriguing cloak-and-dagger tactics have Perry hopelessly hooked. As for the silent siren behind the mask, is she heiress Byrl Gailord or penniless Adelle Hastings?

Aspiring actress Stephane Olger just wants to be in pictures. But she may end up in mug shots instead when she gets herself caught up in a crime. Shortly after quitting her job and moving to Hollywood, she is picked up by a well-dressed man while hitchhiking. The man loses control of the car and they end up in a horrible accident. Both Stephane and the driver escape unscathed but the strange man flees the scene leaving Stephane to face a charge of manslaughter.

It's two in the morning when Hannah Sheraton slips into Archer's Hermosa Beach apartment to see if Josie Bates sleeps in his bed. But Josie isn't there. In fact, Josie isn't anywhere. When her Jeep is found abandoned in a parking lot near the Redondo pier, the only clue to her whereabouts leads Archer to Daniel Young, an expert witness for the prosecution in the case that made Josie's reputation as a defense attorney 10 years earlier. From the Hollywood Hills to the glitzy evangelical enclave of Orange County, Archer bores into the past.

The extraordinary Perry Mason never handles straightforward divorce cases, but this one is an especially strange bird. Rita Swaine is dating her sister's ex-boyfriend. Her sister, Rosalind, is married to shady insurance adjuster Walter Prescott, who's got dollar signs in his eyes and ice water in his veins. When Rita's beau gallantly steps in to warn Rosalind about her heinous husband's designs, Prescott hatches a plan to prey on them all...by suing for big profit.

On his way to finding out, Mason meets Mrs. Milfield, a barely distraught widow, and a slew of suspicious characters all intimately connected to the recently deceased, a man murdered on someone else's yacht. As the surprising scenario unravels, it takes a sharp mind like Mason's, the savvy of his secretary Della Street, and the legwork of investigator Paul Drake to pull all the clues out of the water before the case sinks like a deadweight.

Joan Kirby doesn't believe her husband's story about picking up a stranded woman in the middle of the night and dropping her off at a hotel. She asks Perry Mason to cross-examine him. Mason uncovers a much murkier trail involving murder, illegal adoption, stolen narcotics and blackmail.

Do birds of a feather plot murder together? When notorious playboy Arthur Cushing is murdered, Belle Adrian suspects that her daughter, Carlotta, is the killer, and Carlotta suspects her mother of the crime.

Lorraine Elmore is a well-to-do widow who's ready to marry again. But nervous Linda Calhoun is certain that the man her aunt Lorraine has fallen for is a fortune-hunting Bluebeard who's out to make a killing - in more ways than one. Perry Mason allays Linda's paranoia - until Detective Paul Drake digs up enough dirt to convince the lawyer that dashing, mysterious Montrose Dewitt is digging a grave for his bride-to-be.

First published by St. Martin's in 1958, Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder immediately became the number one best seller in America, and was subsequently turned into the successful and now classic Otto Preminger film. It is is not only the most popular courtroom drama in American fiction, but one of the most popular novels of our time. A gripping tale of deceit, murder, and a sensational trial, Anatomy of a Murder is unmatched in the authenticity of its settings, events, and characters.

A spanking-new tin can, secretly placed among the rows of Mrs. Florence Gentrie's preserves, contains not a speck of food - but it does carry one very damning clue to a murder that took place right next door. Such an unsavory discovery in such an unlikely place can't help but pique the curiosity of a dedicated mystery hunter like Perry Mason.

When Matilda Benson solicits the help of Perry Mason, her request seems simple enough: cruise to a gambling ship moored just beyond the twelve-mile limit and buy back the IOUs signed by Miss Benson's niece. But after Mason reaches the floating casino, he discovers problems aplenty - most notably the ship's owner with a bullet hole through his head. Strangely enough, Matilda and her niece are also on board that night...when someone tosses a gun over the railing. Does Perry Mason's client have something to hide?

Ellen Robb does more than just sing for her supper - she also dances and sells cigarettes in a two-bit gambling parlor in a one-horse town. But when she hits a sour note with her scheming employer by refusing to help fleece a fat-cat customer in a crooked card game, she finds herself out of all three jobs. That's when she sings her song of woe to Perry Mason, who promises to turn her blues into greenbacks with the help of his crack team, Della Street, and Paul Drake, and a hefty lawsuit.

Years ago Alden Leeds found a rich vein of gold in the Klondike. Now his greedy relatives fear he's planning to throw his fortune away on a gold-digging spouse, Emily Milicant. So to prevent the two from joining in holy matrimony, they commit their affluent kin to a sanitarium on a trumped-up charge. Then Leeds escapes, only to end up in the company of Emily's blackmailing brother, John, a manufacturer of fixed dice, rolling bones that always come up seven.

The two women in Perry Mason's office were a cat-and-mouse combination. And at first glance it seemed that little Mrs. Davenport was the mouse. But her husband said she was trying to kill him...that she had already murdered once and would not hesitate to strike again. Mason's own curiosity made him take the case, and before long he was wanted for questioning by several different officers of the law. Question: was Myra Davenport a quiet little person, who enjoyed nothing better than pottering about in her garden? Or was she a poisoner, a minx, a modern Lucrezia Borgia?

He announced himself as Mr. Cash. His calling card was ten crisp hundred-dollar bills! "My wife has disappeared," he told Perry Mason. "She's in trouble of some sort. I want to find her." Mr. Cash's wife was indeed in trouble of a most serious sort. First, her jewelry disappeared. Then she disappeared. Perry Mason had to find her before the police could arrest her - for murder.