Cocktails, Coquettes and Cigarettes

From 1933 to 1970, Erle Stanley Gardner thrilled readers with his gritty courtroom mysteries featuring one of the world's most well-known lawyers Perry Mason. For the readers who liked urban stories of blackmail, murder, deceit and a myriad of other vices, the Perry Mason books delivered the goods. In addition, the courtroom scenes in the series were both instructive and enjoyable, written by a man who had been a lawyer and who had also studied and perfected the hard-boiled detective and mystery genre. This book is a fact-filled tour through all 82 of the Perry Mason mysteries with a special focus on the qualities that endeared them to so many readers of popular fiction: cocktails, coquettes and cigarettes. Each book is classified in a rating system indicating the depth of those qualities to be found in the story, plus details about the time period, the TV show and much more.