Search - Top of the Heap (Bertha Cool and Donald Lam)

Published in 1952, this is the thirteenth of 29 novels starring the PI partnership of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam that were written by Erle Stanley Gardner under the pen name of A.A. Fair. After reading about half-dozen of this a series (a misnomer since they needn’t be read in any order), I think that this one is worth reading because it is both characteristic and uncharacteristic of Gardner’s approach to mystery writing. As usual, the murder is a relatively small part of an intricate scheme, plot, or scam. Plus, hard-charging Bertha mainly provides the comic relief while ex-lawyer Lam does the thinking and the leg work. Unusual for Gardner are the social science observations, especially involving female characters. He puts on his sociologist’s hat to have a young women describe Sex in the City / Sex and the Single Girl in LA circa the early 1950s. Through an ex-strip tease artist, we get the anthropological view from a participant-observer about a self-possessed stripper’s sense of her power over the audience and her teasing of it as an assertion of control. Burlesque as empowerment - no, not an idea we expect in a mystery from 1952, much less one written by Erle Stanley Gardner.

This is the new Hard Case Crime edition of the wonderful old A.A. Fair story (really by Erle Stanley Gardner). Brainy Donald Lam and his boss, the large and blustery (but nobody's fool) Bertha Cool, solve another case. Recommended.

When the beautiful girlfriend of a notorious gangster vanishes, the last man to be seen with her needs an alibi - and fast. Enter Donald Lam of the Cool & Lam detective agency. But his client's story doesn't add up, and soon Lam's uncovered a mining scam, an illegal casino, a doulbe homicide...and a chance for an enterprising private eye to make a small forutne - if he can just stay alive long enough to cash in!