Nice story! I like the way it fills in what happened to make them spend those 8 years apart. Now I'm going to go find another of your stories to read. :)

This is a response to "Laura" who flamed your story after only a few chapters. Try doing what my grandmother used to say, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything." I'm not that sweet, however, I'd say play somewhere else if you don't like the story. I think it's damn fantastic. Where are your stories? I'd like to take a look at them...

I know I have reviewed this before, but this is one of the most emotionally painful scenes I have ever read. When Perry breaks Della's heart, it nearly breaks mine. It is so awful, the way he treats her. You've done a fanstastic job with this scene. Murph

KUDOS TO YOU! This is a great story, true to life. The feelings feel true and right. I felt in the books there were broad hints to a deeper relationship but the show was rather sterile. After hearing the interview with Barbara in the 50th Anniversary edition and ESG's participation it makes more sense. I find it funny that DS is supposedly based on Jean (his ex-secretary whom he married). Of course the series was in a different more (supposedly)puritanical time.

Anyway this a marvelous story and I could not stop reading

Murphycat I am honored! Thanks so much for your kind words! As for your suggestion, if you look at my note at the beginning of chapter one, you will see that that is exactly what I am doing! I have decided, though, two close this story after two more ending chapters and start anew with Paul's murder. I want to do it up right and give our wondering boy the send off he deserves. I've always loved him.
startwriting...thanks again for the advice and kind words...as you know am a big fan! :)

chelsea PM me so I can tell you

Great story! Now, a request: how about a follow up where they find Paul's killer? I'd love that. You've done a fantastic job. I have to admit this was not sappy, cheesy or any of those other horrible adjectives that I hate! YOu made Laura the true bitch she is (LOL) and put her well into her place. Really, this is one of the best I've read, in any fanfiction fandom. Huzzah!

God! I could feel her poor heart breaking. What pricks men can be-especially when they are deciding for us! Oh, dear.

I must say, a lot of fanfiction is so awful, but this story is magnificient! The characters are fabulously done. The plot is extraordinarily creative and I LOVE it. It would explain so much! I like how her relationship with Paul, Jr., developed and explains so much. Fantastic so far!

Sorry if this doubled posted but I think the first one posted before I was done writing.

startwriting wrote: "Off topic:There is another site you can post the 'steamier stories' on. I have two stories waiting to be posted there, I just want to know how people review them and how they think about it. There are some more stories of P and D there, some too much (too explicit) for me, but hey, I can chose whether or not to read them?"

Can you point me in the direction of this other site...I would love to read more stories about P & D. Thanks much!

startwriting wrote: "Off topic:There is another site you can post the 'steamier stories' on. I have two stories waiting to be posted there, I just want to know how people review them and how they think about it. There are some more stories of P and D there, some too much (too explicit) for me, but hey, I can chose whether or not to read them?"

Can you point me in the directi

Mad Men, srsly?! OK, that explains a lot. Our taste buds are wired completely different. Too much drama, too depressing. LoL. But nice job wardrobe department! The rest raises some serious issues like all those other shows set in the past. Too 2000s with their characters & storytelling, drives me bonkers, esp when it comes to women. But that explains why I disagree with you on your image of D and BH. I only know peops that age (Greatest Gen) who never cussed but rather resisted the growing aggression as the 60s and 70s rolled on and ran us over. Ladies of a style and grace that doesn't exist anymore. So I still give you the clappy hands for aptly describing the changing times but I disagree that D & P have to change to the negative along the way. Drama does not equal realism. It's just a way to entertain which is fine if you're into that but it's not a necessity and all too easily jumps the shark.

Granted, the characters changed on the show but they didn't warp into the 60s. They actually remained quite true to themselves. The TV movies did raise some issues but it depends on how you wanna see 'em. The Lost Love kiss?! Not so deep IMO, rather sweet like allysonbirch said. The Parrish stuff, yeah, sorry. Leaves everything open for personal mind games. Mine doesn't reduce P to a SOAB and D to a victim of his frolicking with other women. For me, cheating will never just be a peccadillo. Also, in Desperate Daughter D said she “wasn't very truthful” with that lady she squeezed for info. So were D/P schmusing all the time or not?! I adore RB but apart from the hanky-panky quote he also said they “finally” kissed (ref to Telltale Talk Show Host) on Vicki's in the early 90s. That's PR at its finest. He was a pro. So, you're interpreting a lot into what may or may not have been insinuated in the movies which surprises me after all the info you've volunteered about yourself.

Personally, I don't think P/D were modern Rock'n Roll and ahead of their time as you've raved for example. D/P were born as characters in the 30s, a high time for sassy women, yes. Their dynamic though was still mighty old school & reputable despite their schmusing in the books. These are not Boomers we're talking about here but a different, more discreet and humble generation who was raised with a different understanding of a lot of things. Thus looking at D/P through a modern microscope just doesn't work, esp as OAPs. Our pc'ed lives and post-feminism really are another world.

But yeah, this is your party, knock yourself out. I'm still digging it w/out agreeing with your like (and some others around here) for twisting and hurting characters who “are so dear to your heart”. I'll never get why writers love to do that (no offense) coz you're not writing about yourselves but about well-known characters instead. That's also my issue with the graphic sex. It pornifies which is currently all the rage and def a Gen Xer/Millenial thing but, IMO, ill-fitting with the given time frame and rather diminishing.

(I cannot review ch 9, because I already have, so now I'm posting here ... )

Yes ... , this was good, and I absolutely loved it.
The sex, romance, and love was brilliant, I can personally not get enough of P D steam, but others do and can get offended, and so you might want to warn people, before you start the chapter. ('if you don't want it, don't read it'. And that's just it, isn't it?) Or indeed, rate it 'M', as suggested before by fellow reviewers.

Off topic:There is another site you can post the 'steamier stories' on. I have two stories waiting to be posted there, I just want to know how people review them and how they think about it. There are some more stories of P and D there, some too much (too explicit) for me, but hey, I can chose whether or not to read them?

I'm 38 like you, my mother watched the TVmovies with me and I fell in love with P and D then, and already started to think about what was going on between them behind the screens. I talked about this with my mom a couple of weeks ago (she reads my stories on ), and she told me I just always assumed from the beginning P and D were a romantic couple. So senior sex ... oh well, I just want them happy. In this stressful and eerie, confusing times now (for me, but moreover in general of course), really, if they are happy, I'm happy.

Apart from all, I love these discussions, different opinions, different stories, different takes on what we saw, and what we think happened. Bless you all. Thanks for a wonderful treat.

I'm sorry if I confused you by my use of the word "retort." I meant not at all that you answered a reviewer in a rebuking manner but rather with point by point counters to another point of view (as in, say, a debate.) To Marti, who took issue with the narrative of Perry hurting Della, you answered with one meaning of a "retort," part of which is "Would that that were true. But, in the end, he has his flaws. If you chart the story lines (and I have, believe me...) he cheated on her at least twice and they were at least somewhat apart from '77 to '85. Okay, here goes: ...and on to

"So he would have cheated again in '67 and for a while that one was...Lastly, I and disagreed with this, he gave Laura quite a tonsillectomy at the beginning of Lost Love, in the doorway of her manse. No, much as I love him, he has made quite a practice out of hurting our girl. But it just makes their love real and therefore greater to me anyway...".

I do think that qualifies as a dignified retort, an argument firmly stating your case.

As for the communal appellate court secretaries-yes, that does make some sense simply because the appellate judges, at least in a state as large as California, travel to other cities during the year to hear cases.

In any case, my point in bringing up that Della could have been his secretary was that Perry's going to San Francisco to accept a judicial appointment would not have been reason enough for them to separate if they were a couple, as I see it, but as the movie writers evidently didn't. She stayed in LA to work for someone else. Even if she couldn't any longer be Mason's right arm again in a legal sense, she could just as easily have gotten a job with an Arthur Gordon type or any type at all, but one who lived in the same city as Mason. The point remains that the writers of the movie never accounted for why he chose to leave his beloved lawyering and why she chose to stay and not go with him. The most parsimonious explanation is that the writers felt no need to portray or even to intimate that Perry and Della were a couple. Of course, taking this a bit further, they also seemed to feel no need to portray nor intimate that Perry and Della felt any angst about going their separate ways, even as "only" employer and employee after all those years.

Then too there were loyal series viewers who were not concerned about the, "Are they or aren't they?" questions so it strikes me that the writers of that reunion movie were dismissive of them as well. Even those audience members who might not have looked upon Perry and Della as a pair in "that way," were still likely to feel an explanation of sorts was due them in that first movie, that some allusion to the difficulty of adjusting to life without the partner with whom they had worked for several decades might have been offered by the writers.

You said,
"Anyway, I just looked at the kiss again and that was not a chaste kiss, not with both mouths open; and Ken didn’t think so, either."

Ken?
I didn't see "open" mouths and the kiss took place in the blink of an eye with her making the move. If I recall, he's on a step below her and she moves to him. I am also remembering Jean Simmons being asked about it in an article promoting the movie, and she said, "It was sweet, not what you might be thinking." In any case, this isn't "cheating" as I understand the word.

You said,
"As for bride, they absolutely were implying he might be her father; throughout the whole movie and in press from when the movie was aired. Bit of a brouhaha, it was. And you can see it in the interaction with Diane Baker, and Della’s jealousy and then, of course, when Diane Baker says to Della, “[I can’t thank him]… there’s so much you don’t know about Perry and me; so much.” Della with tears in her eyes says, “I know. I really know.' "

I'd like it if you could point me to references promoting "Heartbroken Bride" that suggested Mason had an affair a long time ago that left him with a child, a child he hasn't acknowledged, or such an affair that led him to think for a time that the child could have been his. (I realize they might be hard to find, but if you've collected any articles, I wouldn't mind reading the relevant parts.) I know there was a two-part "Ironside' episode with that very plot, where he begins to believe an adult child is his, but I can't find any evidence that there was a suggestion of his perhaps being that girl's father in HB.

For instance, Mason doesn't show any particular affection for Kaitlyn in any of the scenes. In fact, there isn't a single scene depicting him looking as if he feels he's missed out on something in not being able to raise his child, no scenes showing him looking forlorn or wistful or guilty or embittered or sad, nothing showing him looking at his "child" longingly. Had they wanted to hint he might be her father or that he thought he might be, I'd have thought they would have written such a scene, a scene showing the anguish of a man who loves a child whom he can't acknowledge, a pained man who has had to keep his love hidden. There is no such touching or heart-rendering scene. In fact, there's not one small instance where he looks at the young girl in any special way.

In reply to this-

"And you can see it in the interaction with Diane Baker, and Della’s jealousy and then, of course, when Diane Baker says to Della, '[I can’t thank him]… there’s so much you don’t know about Perry and me; so much.' Della with tears in her eyes says, 'I know. I really know.' "

You must find me dense, but I see no jealousy from Della, none. In fact, this, I think, is the strongest argument *against* the idea that she and Perry had an affair. The woman is portrayed as a good and decent person, not a vixen who is out to show up or to hurt Della with allusions , insinuations, inferences to an intimate physical past with Perry, the man Della obviously cares for.

What decent woman, one with whom Perry has remained friends ( along with her husband), would say "There's so much you don't know about Perry and me, so much," if what she really means is, "I slept with the man you love, Della"? No such decent woman, and that's but one reason why I don't believe they intended *that* meaning at all. I believe they were suggesting that Perry saved the marriage of those two and that the character played by Diane Baker remained forever grateful to him for that, that the child whose marriage he had come to celebrate with them would never have been born at all had Perry not saved their marriage. As for Della's tears- Della showed tears in episodes from the original series, and to me they looked like tears of "Yes, he's wonderful, I know, and I know he must have been a Godsend to you."

I can think of only one possibility, albeit a stretch, but it might be a possibility when one considers how bad some of the writing was with the movies. It's not beyond all reason to think that someone might have tried to write a first script that suggested such a thing when one considers how little they seemed to care about the Perry Mason brand, about the ESG brand, but that by the time script consultations took place, that would have been torpedoed, and changes made to excise such a thing.

As for the more intimate descriptions...strictly personal taste, to be sure. Judging from the comments, many of your readers absolutely loved this aspect of your narrative. If the writer and the readers love it, it's a winner!

As for the sexual activities of seniors... the earlier descriptions of Mason made some of his activity seem unlikely, or if possible, likely to be ungraceful. I just didn't like the image in my head.

Small point, but as a journalist, I think you'll appreciate this (I hope) - "cummerbund"

If you want to keep writing the sex scenes the way you did in this story, which is fine with me, you could rate it M. The people who have a problem with sex scenes won't even see it because you have to specifically ask for M rated stories since they don't appear automatically on the list. If someone does find an M story, reads it and has problems with it, it's their own fault. Please don't stop writing the way you want because a FEW people have a problem with it.