Synopsis: Twenty years earlier, Ellen Calvert won a beauty contest, trip to California and a screen test. However, in addition to her movie career not taking off, she became pregnant via an affair with the son of a wealthy business owner in her midwestern hometown. When she was given $1000 to have an abortion, she instead decided to change her last name to Adair and disappear, arranging for her son to be secretly adopted by a couple she did housecleaning for. When people from her hometown begin searching for her, she seeks advice from lawyer Perry Mason. Then, when she learns the father is dead and her son stands to inherit millions, she asks Mason for help in that endeavor. Unfortunately for Mason, the lone witness that can verify Ellen's story is found dead and the evidence points to his client as the murderer.
Review: After taking a short break from
Perry Mason books to focus on the books I received as birthday gifts, I checked
The Case of the Queenly Contestant out from my local library. I finished the book yesterday evening and unfortunately, it wasn't one of my favorites.
I think the biggest problem with this book is there's just too much going on in the beginning. You have Ellen approaching Mason about privacy laws and taking quite a bit of time to finally tell him the truth about why she needs the information. Then, when they learn the man who knocked her up was lost at sea, the story became more about her trying to prove the young man she claims is her son really is, which in turn requires Mason to discredit a woman who is claiming Ellen made up the whole pregnancy story. Then, eventually, we get to the main story, murder. In between all of that, she even fired and re-hired him.
This probably wouldn't have been a big deal had the murder mystery itself been interesting. However, compared to many others from this series, it was kind of weak. Yes, Ellen lied about when she found the body and even tampered with the scene. However, there was never a reason to believe she was the killer. The victim, Agnes Burlington, was needed to prove Ellen's story. Why would anyone think there was motive for Ellen to kill her?
In fact, Agnes' information only served to make it easier to figure out who her real killer was. After all, there was another interested party that would be out millions if Ellen could prove she was the mother of the real heir. As soon as Agnes was found dead, it wasn't too hard to figure out they were the ones who killed her.
The thing that bothered me most about all of that is, once again, the book had to make Lt. Tragg seem incompetent to even make a case against Ellen. I've said this before, if you want Tragg to be an effective rival to Mason, you can't make him look bad at his job.
Final Opinion: There are some really great Perry Mason books out there. This is not one of them. It wasn't the worst one I've read, but it wasn't anything more than an average mystery.
My Grade: C
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