ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Worried Waitress. Perry Mason #77. William Morrow, hardcover, 1966. Pocket, paperback, 1967. Reprinted many other times.

   A waitress who wants to ask Perry Mason for advice in a restaurant is invited to come to his office, Her story concerns her aunt’s financial problems and the discovery of several thousand dollars hidden in her closet. Mason advises the waitress to move out of her aunt’s house, but it is too late. The aunt is attacked, and the girl is accused.

   A trial is inevitable (in this case a hearing), and it brings to light an impersonation of a blind woman, a struggle for control of a manufacturing corporation, plus a fight for community property.

   Dialogue carries too much of the action and the story. People don’t really talk this way, except on old radio programs.

Rating: ***