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About the author
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) left school in 1909 and attended Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana for just one month before he was suspended for focusing more on his hobby of boxing than his academic studies. Soon after, he settled in California, where he taught himself the law and passed the state bar exam in 1911. The practise of law never held much interest for him, however, apart from as it pertained to trial strategy, and in his spare time he began to write for the pulp magazines that gave Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler their start. Not long after the publication of his first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, featuring Perry Mason, he gave up his legal practice to write full time. He had one daughter, Grace, with his first wife, Natalie, from whom he later separated. In 1968 Gardner married his long-term secretary, Agnes Jean Bethell, whom he professed to be the real 'Della Street', Perry Mason's sole (although unacknowledged) love interest. He was one of the most successful authors of all time and at the time of his death, in Temecula, California in 1970, is said to have had 135 million copies of his books in print in America alone.
Summary
Daphne Beckley comes to Donald Lam to find out what really happened to her husband. He has disappeared and his life insurance contains a double indemnity clause in the event of an accident, meaning Daphne is in line for a windfall. However, if he is still alive, she wants a divorce and alimony.
It is up to Donald Lam to discover if she is the jilted wife of a philandering husband, or a beautiful, very wealthy widow.
Foreword
'The bestselling author of the century ... a master storyteller' New York Times
