Cool & Lam #8

Cats Prowl at Night – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

Though enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II in an earlier book in the series, PI Donald Lam is reportedly away vacationing in Europe. Which, in 1943, I would have thought problematic, since there was a huge war going on and many countries were occupied by despotic regimes. Anyway, the other partner in the PI service, Bertha Cool, takes her turn alone in the limelight, as she did in Bats Fly at Dusk.

Businessman Everett Belder hires Bertha to act as a proxy to pay off a judgement to his advantage. Due to losing a lawsuit, he placed his assets in his wife's name to avoid paying the judgement. The winner of the lawsuit finds himself in financial dutch and needs quick money. So Belder then hires Bertha to settle the judgment for about 10% of the original amount. Belder wants control over his own assets so he is hot to settle the case.

Belder’s domestic life is far from happy since he is so grossly out-numbered: his greedy mother-in-law and sister-in-law are working on his wife to divorce him. Him being one of those weak-kneed womanizers does not help him. Somebody has been sending poison-pen letters to his wife, accusing him of cheating with the maid and an old girlfriend.

With this muddle of a home life, Belder and us readers ought not to be too surprised when a couple of murders occur in complicated circumstances. Not content with the usual convolutions of plot, Gardner rises to comic scenes that the reader of “Just the plot, M’am, just the plot” tendency of the Perry Mason novels would have thought beyond him. Bertha Cool and her nemesis Sgt. Sellars have some sharp, funny exchanges. Bertha also has a hilarious scene with her attorney. She is scandalized that being charged for services that won’t do her any good.

As usual in the Cool and Lam books, once gets the feeling that Gardner wants to do something different from formulaic Perry Mason novels. I think the anarchic comedy balances out the confused ending; perhaps Gardner himself thought the ending needed clearing since in the last chapter he has Bertha run through the reveal in a long letter to Donald Lam.

In Gardner fandom, the general consensus sees Bertha as an interesting character, but the fans miss the cleverness of Donald Lam in the two novels without him. Fans, their secretary Elise Brand and Bertha herself all know that the real detective – the brainy one, as Bertha would say - on the team is Donald Lam.

Fans see Bertha as thick-headed, ham-fisted, money-hungry, and trash-talking. To my mind, however, all her faults make Bertha Cool a more convincing character. She is relatable because she thinks on her feet just about as fast as the average reader. Plus, she allows her emotions – anger, frustration, and impatience, especially –to cloud her judgement, which is extremely relatable for us readers who aren’t kidding ourselves.

For these reasons, Gardner’s two novels with Bertha but without Donald are interesting experiments well worth reading for readers skeptical of conventional wisdom.