Perry Mason in the case of the burning bequest
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How do you explain to your girl that your father murdered her mother? It gets easier when you stand accused of murdering her stepmother. And how do you account for the odd fact that one man married two women who died in the same house, in similar circumstances, two decades apart? Best bet would be to hire Perry Mason to defend you, and then let the legal legend make some semblance of sense out of a gnarled family tree. Bequest is Chastain's second stab at resurrecting Erle Stanley Gardner's resourceful courtroom magician (the first was The Case of Too Many Murders [BKL Je 15 89]). Mason again gets a gentle updating, including a brief nod to the marvels of DNA testing. He still never plea-bargains a case, and he still makes the smitten Della Street act out imaginary murder scenarios in front of an endlessly lenient judge. And most important, all the beloved baggage--courtroom cunning, clipped characterizations, and a solution tailor-made for the most painstaking of armchair detectives--remains comfortably on board. --Peter Robertson

Repeating his successful continuation of the work of the late Erle Stanley Gardner, MWA president Chastain invents a second mystery to challenge lawyer Perry Mason ( The Case of Too Many Murders ). John Leland is arrested for fatally stabbing Iris Jantzen, stepmother of his fiancee, Anne Kimbro, who engages Mason to save her beloved. With Della Street and Paul Drake, the attorney searches for facts to refute the mass of evidence against Leland. But information about an earlier murder in the same house where Iris was killed further incriminates the accused, who repeatedly disappears while shrewd Mason, preparing for the trial, looks elsewhere for a suspect. Will the great lawyer crush the opposition at the height of the courtroom proceedings? Of course. Chastain adheres to Gardner's successful formula in which the fun comes from guessing how--not if--Perry will win his daunting cases. Literary Guild alternate. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The second of Chastain's Erie Stanley Gardner pastiches introduces an un-Gardnerish twist: the link between a recent murder and another murder committed by the accused man's father 20 years ago. When Mason's called out to Anne Kimbro's Beverly Hills house on behalf of her FiancÉ John Leland, things look bad for Leland: not only had the victim, Anne's stepmother Iris Jantzen, actively opposed the marriage, but Leland's been hiding from Anne the news that his father, Edward Lamer, was accused of killing her mother, Elizabeth Kincaid, in the same room. If Leland's innocent (always an axiom in Mason's cases), clearly the call that ""accidentally"" brought Leland out to the house and a chance meeting with Anne several months earlier was arranged, but by whom--Iris' younger brother, Neal Granin, long smitten with Anne; Edward Larner's brother Joe, who discovered Elizabeth's body; Iris' wheelchair-bound husband Benjamin Jantzen; or Bernard Newcombe, who unsuccessfully sued Jantzen's pharmaceuticals company after their sedative Resterin ruined her health and drove her to suicide? Even though Leland acts as guilty as any of Mason's clients, it's no surprise when a suspicious fire in Anne's house leads to the discovery of Edward Larner's body--and reopens the question of who killed Anne's mother, if it wasn't Leland's father after all. Less ingenious than Chastain's first Perry Mason, The Case of Too Many Murders (1989), but better written--though Chastain still, incredibly, can't compete with clunky Gardner as a stylist. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.