While enjoying a leisurely ocean cruise in the company of secretary Della Street, Perry Mason is approached by a passenger who is worried about the well-being of her husband. Not long afterward, her husband is seen jumping off the ship, an apparent suicide-but when the body is recovered, it turns out that he was shot.

Accused of murder, the wife puts her fate in the hands of Perry, who in the course of piecing things together unearths the fact that the husband had once accepted a huge bribe while serving on a jury. The case takes many shocking twists and turns before revealing its surprising conclusion.

With the reissue of this iconic series--many titles of which have not been in print for years--it is our hope at Ankerwycke to introduce a whole new generation of reasers to the investigative brilliance of Perry Mason and the masterful storytelling of Erle Stanley Gardner, drawing together a new and connected family of fans throughout the world.

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) is a prolific American author best known for his works centered on the lawyer-detective Perry Mason. At the time of his death in March of 1970, in Ventura, California, Gardner was "the most widely read of all American writers" and "the most widely translated author in the world," according to social historian Russell Nye. The first Perry Mason novel, The Case of The Velvet Claws, published in 1933, had sold twenty-eight million copies in its first fifteen years. There have been six motion pictures based on his work and the hugely popular Perry Mason television series starring Raymond Burr, which aired for nine years and 271 episodes.