The Case of the Loquacious Liar

Yet another corporate takeover story where a couple of the participants are up to no good. It involves a careless marriage and a son who feels disenfranchised. He ends up accused of murdering his stepfather who controls the pursestrings through his wife. The key is a guy hired to kidnap the young guy and force him to miss an important meeting. A photographer and some central casting comes into play. By the way, where is Hamilton this season?

When I read that the episode contain another plot concerning stockholder's meeting that could change the ownership of a company, I was less than thrilled. In fact just a few shows past- we dealt with the same issue and the nearly the same plot. But I will say that this episode had a few more twist that kept the show interesting.

Lester Martin is trying to keep his step-father, Judson Bailey, from gaining control of the family company. A company stockholder's meeting had been set up for ten o'clock and Lester had to be present in order to secure the outcome of the meeting. However, before he can get ready a rough looking guy breaks into his home gets him intoxicated and then drives him to the edge of town. He misses the meeting but still has another chance later on in the evening.. Lester believes that the man was hired by his step-father to keep him away from the meeting.

Sam Crane (a co-worker and friend of Lester) finds out that Judson is going to be at a local bar. He calls Lois Rogers (girlfriend of Lester and photographer) to see if she would go to the bar and take picture of anyone Judson is meeting that matching the description of the man who kidnapped Lester.

When Judson discovers that pictures had been taken, he becomes upset and goes over to have-it-out with his step-son. Before too long, Judson is dead and Lester is nowhere to be found. Lt Tragg is waiting with murder warrants in hand.

Perry will defend Lester in court and will have to use some slight-of-hand to make people believe they see things that are not really there. And we all know Perry will also use the same 'hand' during the courtroom testimony that will produce the true murderer.

This story has been told several times in the 'Perry Mason' series and will be used again. But the writers do there best in trying to making an enjoyable episode to watch.

Perry Mason's client in this episode of the series is young Wynn Pearce who is the son of Lurene Tuttle and stepson of Bruce Gordon, the latter whom he cordially hates. In fact you would hate him to if in fact a guy with a gun kidnapped you on the day of a company board meeting when a corporate power play was being engineered and your vote could decide the outcome.

Later on Bruce Gordon is found dead and Pearce is the suspect only William Hopper can't locate the alleged kidnapper and he could be crucial to the case.

There is a wonderful scene here where Raymond Burr turns a prosecution witness, a nosy neighbor played by Dorothy Adams to his witness. Can't give more away than that. Adams is best known on the big screen for playing Gene Tierney's lesbian maid in Laura. She's great here.

There was a big surprise for me in the ending because a certain premise on which we were led to believe triggered all the subsequent events did not happen. And the perpetrator is one that we would never have suspected because of that and because the roles that player usually is cast in. Good writing.

This is actually one of my favorite episodes of the fourth season. It has enough intrigue to keep the viewer interested. Although it starts out as just a ploy to retain control of a yacht-building company, the plan soon spins out of control and leads to murder.

Wynn Pearce is just on the edge enough to make his character of Lester Martin believable. The other actors play their parts suitably enough, and the plot moves along well without dragging.

H. M. Wynant makes for a good fill-in for D. A. He has enough fire to make a good foil without being over-the-top. Jeanne Baird and Melora Conway provide some good eye-candy in their respective roles.

The resolution has a bit to be desired (as gallery confessions always do), but the route there (using Central Casting as a lever) makes it all worth it in the end. All-in-all, very watchable.