Part of Series
Frances Celane is unable to marry due to a stipulation in her late father's will, which states that, although she is his only child, she will lose his millions if she does wed. Headstrong, she hires Perry Mason to get around the clause. Complications arise, and he soon finds himself deep into a family murder. Too deep perhaps? "Sulky Girl" is #2 in the successful Perry Mason series, but it's a first in one category. "The Case of the Velvet Claws," #1, did not contain a courtroom drama. In #2, for the first time, Mason illustrates his ability to drive the judge and the prosecuting attorney crazy.
Author
Erle Stanley Gardner was an American lawyer and author of detective stories who also published under the pseudonyms A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray, and Robert Parr. Innovative and restless in his nature, he was bored by the routine of legal practice, the only part of which he enjoyed was trial work and the development of trial strategy. In his spare time, he began to write for pulp magazines, which also fostered the early careers of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. He created many different series characters for the pulps, including the ingenious Lester Leith, a "gentleman thief" in the tradition of Raffles, and Ken Corning, a crusading lawyer who was the archetype of his most successful creation, the fictional lawyer and crime-solver Perry Mason, about whom he wrote more than eighty novels. With the success of Perry Mason, he gradually reduced his contributions to the pulp magazines, eventually withdrawing from the medium entirely, except for non-fiction articles on travel, Western history, and forensic science. See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erle\_Sta...
