The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe: A Perry Mason Mystery

After a thieving woman is accused of murder, it’s up to Perry Mason to prove her innocent…

Sleuthing attorney Perry Mason can’t resist a good mystery, so when he sees an older woman being accused of shoplifting during a department store outing with his assistant, Della Street, he doesn’t hesitate to intervene. Armed with an assumption of innocence and the legal acumen to silence her accuser, Mason leaps to the woman’s defense―until her niece appears, acknowledging her aunt’s guilt, and pays for the stolen items.

Soon thereafter, Aunt Sarah is accused of stealing a valuable set of diamonds, and her niece, Virginia, enlists Mason’s aid. The man who left the jewels in Sarah’s care insists that she didn’t take them, but when he turns up dead, she’s left with nobody to vouch for her. Nobody, that is, but Perry Mason―expert in the art of defending the innocent.

The thirteenth novel in the bestselling Perry Mason series, The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe is an exemplary episode for the character, featuring the complex plots, snappy dialogue, and break-neck pacing that make the novels perennial favorites of mystery fans everywhere.

No one has ever matched Gardner for swift, sure exposition.
—Kirkus

Gardner has a way of moving the story forward that Is almost a lost art: great stretches of dialogue alternate with lively chunks of exposition, and the two work together perfectly, without sacrificing momentum.
—Booklist

With Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner introduced to American letters the notion of the lawyer as a hero―and a detective―which were remarkable innovations. He even gave defense lawyers a good name to boot. His Mason books reaming tantalizing on every page and brilliant.
—Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent and Testimony

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was a prolific American author best known for his works centered on the lawyer-detective Perry Mason. At the time of his death in March of 1970, in Ventura, California, Gardner was “the most widely read of all American writers” and “the most widely translated author in the world,” according to social historian Russell Nye. The first Perry Mason novel, The Case of The Velvet Claws, published in 1933, had sold twenty-eight million copies in its first fifteen years. In the mid-1950s, the Perry Mason novels were selling at the rate of twenty thousand copies a day. There have been six motion pictures based on his work and the hugely popular Perry Mason television series starring Raymond Burr, which aired for nine years and 271 episodes.

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