The Case of the Queenly Contestant is a 1967 novel by Erle Stanley Gardner.
It is the 78th (!) novel in his series about the defense attorney who almost never loses, Perry Mason. An attractive woman in her late 30s, Ellen Adair, comes into the office one day and hires Perry. It seems that some twenty years ago, Ellen—who eventually reveals her true name to be Ellen Calvert—won a beauty contest that included a screen test in Los Angeles. She came out to LA for the screen test and, around the same time, got knocked up. Ellen, ashamed to tell her parents, never went home. She cut off contact with her home, put her baby up for adoption and got a job. Now, the newspaper in Ellen's Midwestern hometown of "Cloverville" is about to run a "Where are they now?" feature on Ellen Calvert. Calvert would like Perry to do what he can to kill the story.
Perry does so, calling the paper and getting them to quash the story.. But soon after a gun-toting private detective named Jarmen Dayton shows up at Perry's office and asks questions about Ellen. Eventually, Perry finds out that most of what Ellen told him were lies. There was no beauty contest; she simply got impregnated by Harmon Hazlett, scion of the richest family in town. Now as it turns out, Harmon Hazlett is dead, lost at sea. Wight Baird, the son Ellen had by Harmon, is the sole heir to a large fortune—if he can be found. And there are people who don't want Harmon found. There's also a blackmailer, who was blackmailing Ellen, and who is found murdered...
Gardner's Perry Mason books outlasted the iconic TV series, which went off the air in 1966. This was one of the last, as Gardner wrote only four more, the last two of which came out posthumously. This book does not feature The Perry Mason Method, which was a trope popularized by the TV show and was rarely seen in the books.
Tropes:
- Blackmail Backfire: Agnes Burlington, the nurse who was actually a blackmailer. She offered to keep silent about what she knew, namely that she could testify that Wight Baird was Harmon Hazlett's son, in exchange for payment from the heirs to the business. Instead she got murdered.
- The Case of...: This novel series was the Trope Codifier, with each book named after one of Perry's cases.
- Chalk Outline: Not only is there a chalk outline showing where Agnes's body fell, there's a separate red chalk outline showing where the blood was before the carpet was removed.
- Company Town: Cloverville, where Ellen grew up. The Hazletts owned the local factory and in fact most of the town, so it was easy to pressure Ellen into leaving.
- Dame with a Case: Ellen Calvert, a good-looking woman who's keeping several secrets, hires Perry to protect her and, eventually, to find the witness who will prove that Wight is Harmon Hazlett's son.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: The Hazlett family tried to hook Ellen up with a Back-Alley Doctor back in the day, but she refused.
- Hand Gag: Perry does this when Ellen goes into hysterics after they find the body of Agnes Burlington. He quickly realizes that Ellen's hysterics were just an act.
- Inconveniently Vanishing Exonerating Evidence: The bullet which killed Agnes is missing, which isn't good for Ellen, because that means ballistics can't rule out her gun. Eventually Perry, who as usual is smarter than all the cops, figures out that the bullet went through the window, and the police find it in the yard.
- Motor Mouth: Maxine Edfield, Ellen's old friend from Cloverville, who as it turns out was paid to lie about the parentage of Ellen's baby. She keeps going on long-winded rants whenever she's asked a question, forcing the judge to ask her to get to the point.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: "Mason muttered an exclamation under his breath," after he gets Ellen to admit that she did in fact enter Agnes's house earlier and find her dead, before Ellen left and eventually coaxed Perry into coming to the house with her.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Right at the end, after charges have been dismissed against Ellen, Harmon Hazlett shows up in court. It turns out he was rescued by a fishing boat, and has only now arrived back in the USA, very much alive. The implication is that Harmon and Ellen will finally end up together, after twenty years.