A lawyer defends his wife, a pathological liar, in a murder trial.

Helen and Ken are a strange couple: She is a pathological liar; he is a scrupulously honest (therefore unsuccessful) lawyer. Helen starts a new job, and when her employer is found dead, all the (circumstantial) evidence points to her. She is put on trial for murder, and her husband defends her. He thinks she is lying again when she says she didn't do it, and insists she should plead that she did, but in self-defense. Charlie, a shady, odd character who may or may not know something about what really happened, hangs around the courtroom and jail, making rude comments and noises. After Helen is acquitted, he tries to blackmail them.—John Oswalt <[email protected]>

Aspiring writer Helen Bartlett and her lawyer husband Kenneth "Ken" Bartlett, face financial difficulties because she's a mediocre writer and he's an ethical, honest lawyer and cannot find clients. Ken doesn't want Helen to work, but she secretly accepts the job of secretary to her father's friend Otto Krayler: a high salary for a few working hours a day. However, she is lured by Krayler, who harasses her and she flees in haste from his apartment. When she summons her best friend Daisy McClure to go with her to retrieve her coat and purse from the apartment, they find Krayler dead; later Helen becomes the police's prime suspect. Ken believes that his wife killed Krayler to defend her honor in self-defense and he defends her in court. After the trial, Helen is blackmailed by the weird Charles "Charley" Jasper.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Kenneth Bartlett is a struggling criminal trial lawyer--struggling because he respects truthfulness and honesty above all else, so refuses to take cases unless the potential client is innocent of the charges. However, his supportive wife Helen, a hobby writer, often tells lies, not just little white ones but big bald-faced ones, as a means to an end and in her creative mindset, not even realizing she's doing it until she's halfway through the lie and it's too late to take back what she's said. Ken knows this of her. Because they are struggling financially, Helen wants to get a job, which is against Ken's wishes as he believes this would be her admitting that he's a failure, so she job-seeks on the sly. She accepts a lucrative secretarial job from wealthy old family friend Otto Krayler although she can barely hunt-and-peck on a typewriter. After she meets with him for the first time, she discovers that his intentions toward his secretaries are more amorous than professional. After she runs out on the job to escape his unwanted advances, she is arrested when he is found murdered. Ken acts as her defense attorney; what she eventually tells him of the incident and his resulting defense might complicate their relationship whether or not he can get her acquitted. Complicating things more is Charley Jasper, a seemingly off-kilter man who could know more about what's going on than his crazed rantings to Helen demonstrate.—Huggo