The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

But Roseman had also spent a sleepless night, brooding over the Perry Mason television program the evening before, which his wife was fond of but toward which Roseman cherished a fierce ambivalence, wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry

Mason and, since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him.

Oedipa walked in more or less by surprise to catch her trusted family lawyer stuffing with guilty haste a wad of different-sized and colored papers into a desk drawer. She knew it was the rough draft of The Profession v. Perry Mason, A Not-so-hypothetical Indictment, a...

“You might have been one of Perry Mason’s spies,” said Roseman. After thinking a moment he added, “Ha, ha.”