'For fans of classic hard-boiled whodunits, this is a time machine back to an exuberant era of snappy patter, stakeouts, and double-crosses' LA Times

'Kingpin among the mystery writers' New York Times

Muriell Gilman left her father at the breakfast table while she cooked seconds of sausage and eggs. When she returned, he had disappeared - seemingly into thin air.

She searched the house from cellar to attic. Then she went out to the workshop ... there, scattered on the floor, were hundred-dollar bills - and in their midst a spreading, crimson stain. That's when she telephoned Perry Mason, who soon discovers that the missing piece of the mystery seems to belong to his arch nemesis Hamilton Burger.

Erle Stanley Gardner