This is the eighteenth in the Perry Mason series, and was published in 1941. As is usual in the early Perry Mason books, there are a lot of plot twists and turns, red herrings, and slightly less than legal activities.
This story begins with Stephanie Claire Olger, a hatcheck girl who is fired from her job in San Francisco. She decides to hitchhike to Los Angeles, and does okay until Bakersfield. She accepts a ride from a handsome man in a fancy car, who starts taking little drinks from a flask, and wants her to join him. He also starts getting a little too fresh, so Stephanie yanks the keys from the ignition so she can get out, but it causes the driver to lose control and cause an accident. Stephanie is knocked unconscious, and when she awakes she is being pulled from the vehicle, which everyone assumes she was driving, as the real driver has disappeared. She is going to be charged with manslaughter, as one of the other people in the accident has died.
Perry Mason is called upon by a friend of Stephanie's, and asked to represent her, which he agrees to do after Drake tells him something fishy is going on with this situation. In addition to the manslaughter charge, it seems that the car had been stolen from a hotshot Hollywood producer in Beverly Hills, and the DA assumes that it had been abandoned by joyriders in Bakersfield, whereupon Stephanie stole it. It is up to Mason and Drake to discover the truth, and get Stephanie out of trouble, which they finally manage to do.
I enjoy the Perry Mason books, the plots are usually pretty involved, with plenty of misdirection, and I usually can't come up with the answer until near the end. A good read, looking forward to reading several other Perry Mason books I have in my TBR pile!
This is 13 out of 48 books in my Mt. TBR reading challenge. Bought 7/20/14, read 2/20/15.
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