02/27/2017
Gardner’s 1936 novel, one of several new audiobooks from Brilliance featuring fiction’s famous defense attorney, is number nine in Perry Mason’s list of literary courtroom battles. It’s one of the series’s best, in which the speech-impaired prelate of the title, William Mallory of Sydney, Australia, involves Mason in the legal rumpus that results when multimillionaire Renwold Brownley is murdered. Gardner was no prose stylist, but he could concoct and spin a yarn so fast-moving and filled with legal tricks and shocking revelations it easily holds its own with today’s legal thrillers, especially when given the vocal stylings of actor Cendese. He gives us a fast-talking, impatient, energetic Mason and a panicked Julia Branner, ex-daughter-in-law of the deceased The villains of the piece, a pair of shady private snoops, talk ultra-tough and thuggish. But they’re sharp enough to nearly commit the series’s most sinister criminal act—causing Mason’s disbarment. (Dec.)

03/01/2017
Perry Mason's suspicions are sparked when a dysfluent character in clerical garb arrives at his office, seeking legal help for a "friend" over a fatal car accident that occurred years before. Then he disappears. Soon Julia Banner slips in, anxious to uncover not only the statute of limitations on California car accidents but advice on how she can secure the financial future of the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption by her grumpy geezer of an ex-father-in-law, Renwald Brownlee. It seems there's a beautiful young woman whom Brownlee has taken in, whom he believes to be the granddaughter he never knew. But Julia knows she's a fraud. Desperate to prove the truth to him, Julia manages to lure Brownlee out of his mansion and is witnessed shooting him dead. Although she insists she's not the murdering kind, the police believe otherwise--which leaves Mason trying to disprove an eyewitness case and wrangling enough red herrings to choke a Russian fishing trawler. Narrator Alexander Cendese performs all the voices and differentiates them very well. A few antiquated verbal vulgarities shock today, but the story is packed with action. It bogs down a bit near the end, but this reviewer dares anyone not to fall for the phrase, "That question is incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial."VERDICT Perry Mason fans and traditional mysteries and courtroom drama listeners will enjoy this classic.--Ellen Abrams, Library Journal