User Reviews

A wealthy woman, Sybil Granger, asks Mason to meet her at a new housing development tract site. There's a model home on the site where her husband's gold digging mistress lives. Sybil comes everyday to spy on him (this seems to be pretty unhealthy behavior). In spite of her husband's infidelity, Sybil doesn't want a divorce because she still loves her husband. There's a possibility that there is oil on the tract property and Sybil has come up with this elaborate scheme to win her husband back. It seems unlikely that Mason would go along with implementing this scheme but he does indeed accept the job of helping Sybil. When one of the owners of the tract site who has discovered Sybil's spying is murdered, Sybil is arrested. As often in the early episodes of this series, Mason uses a questionable ploy to defend his client. In this case, it's in making a taxi cab driver's identification of his client come under question. The whole bit about Mason's determining the method of the murder and in later rattling a witness to name the culprit was well done and interesting. My favorite character in this series, aside from Mason, is Lt. Tragg. Ray Collins is wonderful in the role - from the frequent gleam in his eye to his often sardonic smile as he spars with Mason - it is priceless.

I'm gonna give it a 10 for the same reason that I was gonna give it an 8. with a caveat. See, it's the shot, and the questions around it, right? What I mean is this: Perry's client is watching, then BANGO; dead guy. I'm not gonna tell the whole story; the other reviewers have done an excellent job of that. What I say is this. There had to be TWO shots. If there were, as the evidence suggests, gunpowder particulates on the decedent's (by the way, this guy was an incredible cheapskate) clothing, then Perry showed how in court. Remember that for later. The death shot came from a distance away. Perry showed how that could happen, even bringing a really noisy cart with a homemade shooting bench set on it into court.

I loved the way it visibly irritated the Judge (they've usually got great judges in this series), but when he showed the witness how it worked, and why she was hooked up in murder, Hamilton's case fell apart.

Here's the problem. It's a heckuva shot with a short barrel weapon shooting uphill. Plus, even with a shooting setup like Perry made, THIS shot would have to be practiced many times to get it right. How was the killer supposed to know that the dead guy was even gonna BE there? The killer was a world class shooter, AND a clairvoyant.

The part I really liked, though, was when Tragg wheeled the "contraption" into Perry's office, and told him he was responsible for disposing of it. Now, back to the REMEMBER part. All any good lawyer has to do, is establish reasonable doubt with a jury, or present a good alternate theory of the case (negating evidence or testimony) to win the day. Perry usually does this quite effectively; and if you look back at these episodes, there are times when that's all he does. If he doesn't actually establish proof of guilt, or get the criminal to confess, he can still win by reasonable doubt, or severely undermining the prosecution's case. Remember, again, how many killers confess, when there is no reason to. If they keep their cool, and notice that Perry's already won the case, all they have to do is keep their mouth shut, and they're home free.

Miss Denmark is pretty, but Della is beautiful, Perry's client is a hair brained nitwit. Panicky and silly, she fits the criteria for a "Perry Client". Sometimes, I think there should be a criminal statute for idiocy; of course, then, the courts would be hopelessly clogged, wouldn't they?

Imagine hiring Perry Mason to derail a Divorce by buying stock. Add real estate development to the mix and what do you have? A reason for murder, of course. Then let's add in a gun collection, an unexplained gun that does not belong. Perry driving a 1957 vintage car and a construction shack, a pretty blonde, oil speculation, and Perry shooting a blank from a pistol in court.

Sounds like a pretty good mix. Then we have a taxi driver, and Tragg using his office window as a peeping tom with eye glasses. The whole thing adds up to quite a trail as the spurned housewife who wants to keep her cheating husband even after she sees him and the blonde embracing (a forgiving nature I'd say) with Mason looking on through the eye glasses.

The material of this one is so good, that years later this plot was re-used in the Perry Mason Movies in a longer form. This one gets it done in 52 minutes. It includes Tragg bribing Mason, just to spice things up a bit.