Note: This 1957 outing is one of the best PI team Bertha Cool & Donald Lam books. Gardner plays to his strength - courtroom drama - while giving us a detective yarn that’s sly and thoroughly entertaining.
Beware the Curves – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A. A. Fair
John Dittmar Ansel strolls into Cool & Lam’s office claiming he’s a writer - a claim supported by his bushy hair and delicate hands. He wants Bertha and Donald to find a fellow named Karl - last name unknown - who hailed from Citrus Grove, a sleepy suburb of Santa Ana. Ansel says he met Karl in Paris six years ago, Karl gave him a killer idea for a story, and now Ansel wants to buy the exclusive rights.
It sounds routine, but Lam’s instincts start buzzing. Donald knows Ansel’s tale is baloney. Lam as usual tells Bertha nothing of his suspicions.
Donald Lam tracks down the name – whose holder Karl Endicott was murdered - and delivers it to the client. Worse, a cabbie dropped off a fare at Endicott’s house right before the killing, and the fare looked an awful lot like Ansel. So much for the “just a writer wanting to do the right thing” routine.
But Lam is surprised when the client wants more. Lam points out that if Ansel cared about the murder, he wouldn’t have made three blunders: hiding the truth, omitting that the suspect looked like him, and vanishing without a phone number to warn him that the cops are so interested in the case that they ran Lam out of town when he asked too many questions.
Bertha Cool, however, accepts a second assignment: determine whether it’s safe for the client to return now that the only man who could identify him in the murder case is dead. It isn’t safe - the client is arrested in an elaborate police trap. Donald schemes, keeps Bertha in the dark, dodges the amatory attentions of two honeybunnies, and plays consultant to his law school buddy defend Ansel.
Gardner serves up a lean, readable mystery with a love affair, revenge, small town corruption, political monkey business, and even a climactic murder trial, which is highly unusual in a Lam & Cool novel.
Bertha rues the day she ever met Donald (and it’s a hoot), Donald dazzles, and the courtroom finale is worth the four hours reading this novel will take. No Perry Mason-style lecture for the reveal - just Gardner’s trademark legal fireworks.
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