Nasty oilman Jerome Klee is shot to death and there's no shortage of suspects. Perry's client is Klee's foreman who tried to change his boss's mind about backing out on a drilling contract on a low income family's land.

Perry Mason finds himself the target of an attempt to discredit him while he is in the middle of a major lawsuit.

Perry has all sorts of troubles in this one including a client who takes a shot at him. It starts when dim bulb prizefighter Duke Maronek gets into a fight with Art Grover over pretty model, Sharon Carmody. Duke believes he killed Grover with his bare hands. Perry discovers that a vagrant, who stole a wallet from the corpse, has been charged with the crime. He quickly gets the vagrant off the hook only to discover that Duke has disappeared. It is Sharon Carmody, the model who is up for a big assignment, who holds the keys to Duke's whereabouts and what really happened on the night Art Grover died.

Retired general Roger Brandon is set to head an anti-crime commission to investigate racketeering in a notoriously corrupt town. Rackets boss George Emory claims to have compromising photos of Brandon's young wife, Laura. Emory threatens to launch a smear campaign against Laura unless Brandon refuses the assignment. Brandon calls Emory's bluff and accepts the assignment but then Emory turns up murdered. Guess who gets charged with the crime?

Gossip columnist Danny Shine is a real scumbag. Even his own mother would disown him. So it's no surprise when he turns up shot to death in his car one night after a party at Alex Tanner's house. Danny's assistant, Greg Stanley, is arrested for the murder. Tanner can provide Stanley with an alibi except for one thing--his baby has been kidnapped and if he testifies the child will die.

A nasty actor with a lot of enemies is murdered. Perry gets his accused killer off the hook but then HE turns up dead and an aging, eccentric actress is blamed for that one. Are there two murderers on the loose or are both the work of one person?