... as this week's Perry Mason episode takes us into the world of oil well drilling
Freelance photographer Roger Byrd is taking pictures of wildlife when he spots wildcatter Charles Houston posing his dead wife's body in his car and pushing it off a cliff, making it look like an accident. With pictures of the entire thing, Byrd blackmails Houston who pays Byrd a total of 45 thousand dollars. To cover this blackmail Houston ends up selling much more than 100% of his oil well to investors to get the needed money. At the same time, Byrd is trying to sell the incriminating photos to Paula Wallace, who is the sister of the murdered woman and has always believed Charles had something to do with her death.
When the oil well turns out to be a gusher, Charles is a distraught man. He is in a situation much like Mel Brooks' film "The Producers" - only the well turning out to be dry could have saved him from disgrace, scandal, and prosecution. Of course he ends up dead, and of course about the only person in tonight's episode who is not a loathsome creature is accused of the crime, that being Paula Wallace.
So what is different about tonight's episode is that the corpse of the week is not entirely self evident by the end of the first fifteen minutes. There are so many possibilities. And then once that person is murdered, any one of the other loathsome creatures guest starring this week could have been the killer. It's an interesting spin on the usual situation.