When I was younger, I used to love lawyer and detective shows. I also had a soft spot for Perry Mason until I discovered a disturbing pattern: Mason would always be working for someone in some other capacity (writing a will, handling divorce proceedings, etc.) when someone would die.

Mason pounces on the client like a cat on a ball-string and is suddenly the defense attorney because everyone he accused was always the one needing a defense attorney.

Contrived, contrived, contrived.

Some other detective and lawyer shows did the same thing. Someone around Angela Lansberry in Murder She Wrote was always dying. Same with Dick Van Dyke's doctor character in Diagnosis Murder.

In the case of Lansberry and Van Dyke, the reason was obvious. How else are you going to have a murder mystery with an author or doctor as the detective if someone around him doesn't die and provide the mystery?

Perry Mason is a different matter, as people who hire him are almost always accused of murder. So if I needed a lawyer for a will or something, I do believe he'd be the last lawyer I'd ever hire, because someone I know is gonna die and I'm gonna be accused.

On the other hand, Mason's client always gets off, so maybe if I wanted someone around me to die, I would hire him so that they'd be killed by Old Man Smithers or something, I wouldn't have to bloody my hands, and in the end I'd get off free.

In any case, I've always dubbed the phenomenon that I'm-around-the-lead-so-I'm-doomed the Perry Mason Effect.

It not only applies to doctors, authors, and civil attorneys with a knack for mystery solving, but also drama queens who use the men in their lives as a platform for increased drama, much as the writers lazily kill off someone near Burr, Van Dyke, or Lansberry for an InstaPlot.