Customer Reviews

Perry Mason Solves the Case of the Phantom Fortune

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Unlike most of the other Perry Mason books by Gardner, this one does not have the climactic courtroom scene. The standard scenario is that Mason seems to be on the brink of defeat at the hands of District Attorney Hamilton Burger, yet at the last moment, Mason manages to pull a stunner that resolves everything.

The story begins with Mason being approached by Horace Warren, a happily married man whose wife has a dubious past. Warren wants Mason to take accompany Della Street to a party at Warren's place of residence to scan for unsavory characters and check for fingerprints. Warren believes that his wife is being blackmailed, yet he wants to resolve it without his wife ever learning of his involvement.

A lie is concocted to justify the presence of Mason and Street, but it falls apart very quickly. Things get progressively worse as a man attempts to include Mason in the blackmail. In order to protect his client, Mason pays the man $500, but that only makes things worse. When the blackmailer is found murdered, Warren in found in the building with the suspected murder weapon in his pocket.

Of course, Mason eventually solves the problem, but his solution is dependent on some extremely sloppy police work. That is what makes the story fall down, while it is acceptable to have the police miss some evidence or reach false conclusions, in this case they don't even conduct a complete search of the building. That fact exceeds the normal bounds of believability and since there is no climactic court scene, it just doesn't work well.