Will Perry let someone fry for a crime they didn’t commit? Will the green-eyed sister get the last laugh? You’ll have to read it to find out. Even the lengthy questioning in court of witnesses is involving rather than tedious, and this case has one of the most unusual endings of the entire series. An ice pick, some very tricky business with the blackmail tape everyone wants, and some even trickier business regarding time of death make this one zip along nicely. Even a protracted courtroom questioning doesn't slow this one down enough to mar it significantly. This is really an excellent entry in the series, very enjoyable. Tragg lends Mason a hand in this one, tipping him off at one point! But Mason’s not the only one in a jam, because when the father kicks off, the green-eyed sister’s schemes cause Hattie to be charged with murder. Holcomb looking to catch Perry on the other side of the line he’s always skirting. With Della in tow, Mason walks in on a murder scene he’s been set up to find, and has a very disagreeable Sgt. Sylvia thinks she’s smarter than Mason, and it jams up the works! Her efforts to stay ahead of the blackmailer - and Mason - muddy things up at every turn.
Sylvia doesn’t want that, because it could void all that money she and her more subdued sister, Hattie, and her brother will inherit. The backstory involves whether the money that her ailing father used to get rich - there’s a lot of money involved - came from an old robbery. Her name is Sylvia Bain Atwood, and she’s trying to get out of some tricky business being run by a guy named Brogan, that Paul Drake believes is a shady but smart blackmailer. It begins like a horse jumping from the starting gate when Della makes certain Perry knows she doesn’t like the green-eyed client waiting to see him. This one is surprisingly breezy, in spite of the usual complicated plot involving blackmail and eventually, murder, and a rather lengthy courtroom scene.
The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister is one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels written in the 1950s, when Gardner was at his zenith in the famous series. “No, she’s just giving her sex appeal its morning exercise.” - Perry Mason “She’s too busy stealing her sister’s boyfriend.” - Della Street
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