Gwynn Elston admitted she was an accomplished liar, but insisted she was telling Perry Mason the truth. Her best friend's husband, she feared, had spiked her drink with strychnine because she knew he was leading a double life. Trouble was, her story about the strychnine wasn't quite believeable—neither was her story about how she came into possession of the gun that put a life-sized hole through the chest of the bigamous Frankline Gillett. Yet on the basis of a $5 retainer, Mason had invested $1500 in the probability of her innocence, and the case was getting much more interesting that Lt. Tragg could suspect—for just as there had been two Gillett brides, there were two Gillett corpses—father and son.

Once again, the author has dedicated a Perry Mason novel to a young forensics expert: this novel is dedicated in the Foreword to "my friend, Mitsuo Yokoyama, M.D., Ph.D."

-IBList reader abstract