The Case of the Queenly Contestant

The Case of the Queenly Contestant, by Erle Stanley Gardner This book is dedicated to Professor Leon Derobert for his work in the field of legal medicine. Legal medicine is important to the detection of crime, such as not confusing an entry wound of a gunshot with an exit wound. Death by poisoning can be mistaken for a natural death. Circumstantial evidence is best only when it is correctly interpreted, says Perry Mason. Ellen Adair visits Perry Mason for advice on a legal question: her right to privacy. Twenty years ago she won a beauty contest in a mid-west state. Now her hometown newspaper is looking to publish a story about her, and she doesn't want this publicity. Perry Mason calls the newspaper's editor and orders him to kill this story because it would be an invasion of privacy after the event is no longer current news. But there is a hint of further complications. The next day a private investigator calls on Perry; he too is investigating this beauty contest winner and track her down. Perry quickly devises a scheme to mislead and distract this person; he had a hunch that something's wrong. They use a decoy who resembles Perry's client. This works, and draws out the inquiring investigators. Later Perry and Della meet Ellen Adair to get more information, and truth. But not all of it yet! And so another complex puzzle of a case begins. Soon there's a dead body, and the arrest of Ellen Adair. Evidence accumulates against her. The events in this 1967 novel show Erle Stanley Gardner keeps up with the changing morals of the times. As ever, the book shows why you should never lie to your lawyer. If there is a reasonable explanation for circumstantial evidence other than guilt, the jury must acquit if the case depends entirely on circumstantial evidence. This 1967 book explains why finding a bullet on a stretcher prevents it from being connected to a body. Perry's client is exonerated, and may live happily ever after. But the ending seems to be tacked on.

Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason is faced with a particularly difficult challenge in "The Case of the Queenly Contestant." Especially duplicitous people, including his client, surround him as he tries to get to the bottom of a case involving a woman who may or may not have had the non-marital child of a now-wealthy (and presumably dead) business owner. The woman, Ellen Adair, was once a beauty contest winner who hoped to make it in Hollywood. That failed, though, and she ended up pregnant, she says, and unmarried. That's when she changed her identity and began a new life.Now, twenty years later, Ellen seeks Mason's help as she tries to stay hidden. She is being pursued by a variety of formidable forces seeking to get to the truth of her past. At the heart of the case is a nurse who seems to be shopping her story to the highest bidder. The nurse soon turns up murdered, though, and Mason's client is the prime suspect.This Perry Mason novel is slightly more involved than most of the others and about par for the course in terms of quality. Par, of course, is a high standard for Gardner, and "The Case of the Queenly Contestant" is entertaining and satisfying as a mystery and entertaining diversion.