User Reviews

**SPOILERS** Starts out with a pot shot at a Cougar that may or may not have connected; an unbelievable Puma pelt as a gift for Della, and a combative client who wants Perry's help in a sneaky oil-land deal. Enough, already? Nope. A missing gun, a partner in the deal (murdered) a Sado-Masochistic relationship between Perry's client and his secretary/girlfriend? A couple of cheating lovers, and a small pistol that is the key to the puzzle.

Here's where I have a problem. You knew I had one, didn't you? Paul takes the first pistol to his ballistics expert, who says yes, he'll test it, but if he finds it has been used in a crime, he'll have to turn the evidence over to the police/ D.A. Why bother using a guy like that? Besides, HOW is the lab guy supposed to know ANYTHING about the gun, except what Paul has brought him? How does HE have access to the city's crime lab results? Another reviewer stated that Phipps was trying to cheat Preston, but that's not true; he called Mike up, and said that things were going south, so he'd better get over to the well a.s.a.p. If he was gonna cheat him, he'd just have let it drop where it was; right in Mike's lap. He was on Mike's side (didn't get any credit for it either, did he? And people wonder why I have trust issues), and was murdered for it. Mentioned afterwards only as a victim, NOT a friend, SHAME.

It was good that Perry found an identical pistol whose serial numbers were NOT on the removable barrel. By switching them out in court, he wrecked the prosecution's case by pointing out a strong alternative to the court. THEN Paul's detective work showed up in Perry's theory about who REALLY committed the very first crime, and turned out to be a slithering snake in the grass.

As in other cases, the statement that "I didn't mean to kill him" will have no bearing on the prosecution's presentation for the court. He took the weapon with him, the killing was in furtherance of previous felonies; they'll reserve a nice seat in the gas chamber just for him. The sweet cheater he was involved with is gonna have to find another man to milk for a nice apartment, etc., and of course, there's a sniveling happy ending for the twisted involvement between Mike and Lydia.

Perry Mason is called to defend Della Street's real life husband Bill Williams, an oil wildcatter who tried a con game on a former partner with Noah Keen. It all goes wrong with Keen shot to death and Williams charged with murder.

The red herring in this case is John Howard the former partner whom Williams truly hates. He's convinced that Howard was the one who did it and you know he didn't. With the Perry Mason parameters, Howard would have to have an unbreakable alibi which Raymond Burr would break on the stand. Otherwise you know it had to be some other party.

The frame of Williams is neatly accomplished and the hint I'm going to give you is interchangeable parts. And it's forensics that breaks the case open.

Nice to see Raymond Burr free Barbara Hale's husband.

***SPOILERS*** This Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, episode has very little to do with cougars or cats of any verity but some half baked oil scheme about a tapped oil well that has a load of the black stuff, black gold, underneath it. That information is being kept secret from the man in charge Mike Preston, Bill Williams, by his partners Harlow Phipps, Noah Keen, and Hugh Jamison, John Howard, or that's what it's made to look like. There's also the mystery of an oil rig fire some ten years ago that lead to the disappearance of $100,000.00 in cash and government securities that's connected to all this where Preston had his knee smashed turning him into a cripple. It's the missing money & securities that surface here that's being used to buy the land where the oil is sealed or locked into.

As were soon to expect, in a Perry Mason episode, someone gets murdered and it turns out to be Harlow Phipps who tried to steal, with the help of Jamison, Preston's land from right under him. And it's "lucky" Mike Preston who ends up getting blamed for Phipps' murder. Perry who's contacted by Preston's secretary and secret lover Lydia Reynolds, Rita Lynn, to represent him realizes that the murder weapon a .25 caliber handgun was tampered with. In fact it was two different .25 caliber handguns that were involved in Phillps' murder! And even if it will take for hell to freeze over he'll do everything possible to prove his point and get his client, Mike Preston, off. Not that he's just Perry's client but also married to his Girl Friday or private secretary Dalla Street played by Barbara Hale!

****SPOILERS*** Sure enough It was the missing money & securities that not only smoked the killer out here in Phipps murder but also solved the fire some ten years ago that left Preston a cripple as well! That's what you call getting two birds with one stone. As for Phillps' killer after him being exposed by Perry Mason in the courtroom, he wasn't even on the stand getting cross-examined, he suddenly bolted for the exits! Only to be stopped dead in his tracks while offering only the mildest of resistance to the court guard, who he could have easily overpowered, as he meekly admitted his guilt! What a Wimp!