PERRY MASON IN THE CASE OF TOO MANY MURDERS

by Thomas Chastain ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 17, 1989

Perry Mason returns in this novel by Chastain (Who Killed the Robins Family?), which will remind Mason's vast audience more of his recent TV movies than of Erle Stanley Gardner's novels. Gilbert Adrian, a Los Angeles businessman under investigation for bribery and possible links to organized crime, meets an unknown man in the Oaks Restaurant and, in a scene not much longer than this sentence, guns down his companion in front of dozens of witnesses. Minutes later, when the police go to pick up Adrian at his home, he's been shot, too, and his den ransacked--presumably by his estranged wife Laurel, who's waiting outside with the story that she just arrived on the scene. Laurel retains Perry Mason, though withholding from him the news that she failed a lie-detector test, and she's duly arrested and arraigned. In the meantime, Mason works with Paul Drake, Jr., to round up cardboard witnesses--Adrian's secretary Megan Calder; city councilwoman Janet Coleman; his bodyguard Steven Benedict--and evidence, including an appointment book that contains contradictory listings for many appointments. Though the writing is pretty terrible and the plotting perfunctory, the courtroom scenes are genuinely absorbing, and the solution--hinging on identifying the man Adrian killed as a trigger man who's been hired to kill him--surprising and logical. Chastian imitates most of Gardner's faults--his dramatically impoverished scenes, his tin ear for dialogue, his hero's sententiousness--but manages in addition to pull off a denouement worthy of his master.

Pub Date: July 17, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION