CASE BLACK EYED BLONDE

Rating:
Summary: The obvious suspect turns out to be innocent
Review: This story starts simple enough. A woman (Diana Regis) walks into Perry Mason's office fighting mad. The stepson of her employer made unwanted advances to her and when she resisted, he punched her in the eye. Since the stepfather is a wealthy man and has no illusions about the character of his stepson, he immediately pays $2000, of which $500 is Perry Mason's fee. Of course, no story involving Perry Mason is ever that simple.
Shortly after the settlement, Diana's roommate is found murdered from a bullet wound in the back of the head and the murder weapon is found in Diana's room with only her fingerprints on it. This involves Perry, secretary Della Street and detective Paul Drake on a hunt for vital clues as to what really happened. Since circumstances caused Della and Perry to be at the murder scene shortly after it happened, they saw a vital clue that allows for the possibility that Diana is innocent.
In this episode, everything hinges on timing. Two vitals clues concerning when things happened and how much time elapsed are given. The first deals with the time of the murder being established as after it began raining and the second and most critical deals with the precise time the spoiled stepson threw the punch. The reader is tipped off concerning the discrepancies, although it is not easy to catch them. There is a strong and dramatic ending, where the murderer is revealed. It was not the person that I suspected. I fell for thinking it was the stepson. Perry Mason also locks horns with Sergeant Holcomb, who is basically an idiot, thinking that Mason is only trying to make the police look bad.
This story has two ingredients that make a good murder mystery, discrepancies that seem impossible to resolve and an obvious suspect that turns out to be innocent. Together, they kept me riveted for the last thirty pages