Perry Mason 112: Crows Can't Count

Note: I’m not fond of comparisons, but here goes: Cool and Lam versus Perry Mason. The A.A. Fair novels are shorter, faster-paced, and full of funny situations between Donald Lam - a former lawyer with a knack for trouble - and Bertha Cool, a brassy, no-nonsense detective. Their contrasting styles make them entertaining: he’s quiet and insightful; she’s as sensitive as a fire hydrant. These stories lean into the seedier side of life, focusing on family problems and the vagaries of human behavior rather than courtroom drama. 

Crows Can’t Count – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A. A. Fair

This 1946 outing is Gardner in his “let’s see how many plot threads I can tangle before the snarl weighs as much as a bowling ball” mode. We’ve got emerald mines in Colombia, a trust fund with middle-aged trustees who can’t keep their male gazes off the young heiress, a crow with kleptomania, and at least one corpus. If you came here for the usual mix of comedy from Bertha Cool and deduction by Donald Lam, disappointment awaits. The first-person narration is by Donald Lam: pure deduction, minimal action, and dialogue that often lacks Gardner’s typical snap, crackle, and fizz.

The setup: fifty-ish Harry Sharples hires Cool and Lam to trace an emerald necklace that shouldn’t be in a local dealer’s hands. Sharples and Robert Cameron co-manage the estate of Cora Hendricks, late owner of a Colombian gold mine. The heirs? Shirley Bruce, a knockout who kisses like a teenage boy’s dreamboat, and Robert Hockley, a gambler with issues like unstable emotions and impulsivity. Before Lam can get a line on the players, Cameron turns up dead, his crow missing, and a necklace minus emeralds sitting on the table. Cue the parade of suspects: young Shirley, a mysterious Juanita Grafton, her artist daughter Dona (currently crow-sitting), and assorted main-chancers.

What follows is a marathon of meetings, phone calls, and enigmatic conversations that make you nostalgic for the days when detective fiction maybe didn’t involve so much talk talk talk. Eventually, everyone decamps to Colombia for an “exotic idyll,” which Gardner renders with the genuine sympathy and respect he brought to Mexico - though Bertha Cool’s culture shock is milked for humor that feels past its expiration date by about 50 years. The crow subplot? Cute and welcome, but not enough of a diversion.

The mystery itself is a ball of yarn untangled by Lam in a multi-multi-page monologue that reads like the reveal in a whodunnit from the Twenties. The solution makes sense – when the hard-core reader squints - but getting there is like jogging with shoes on the wrong feet. Gardner’s usual sparkle? We fans gaze the horizon in vain, from our crow’s nest. Bertha, once a comically profane bulldozer, is reduced to a cartoon homebody out of her element. Lam fares better because we fans are used to his never being forthcoming but his deductions feel like the physics theory that depends on the step “Then a Miracle Happens.”

Bottom line: Crows Can’t Count isn’t terrible, but it’s Gardner seemingly distracted which is weird in a year when he was not his usual hyper-productive self, publishing only TCOT Borrowed Brunette and The D.A. Breaks a Seal, a D.A. Doug Selby novel. Maybe he finally gave himself some well-deserved vacations.