Note: A. A. Fair is one of the many pen names of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of defense lawyer Perry Mason. The mysteries under the Fair pen name feature the private eye partnership Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.
Double or Quits – A.A. Fair
Writing as A.A. Fair, Erle Stanley Gardner released the fourth and fifth Bertha Cool – Donald Lam mysteries in 1941. In March, Spill the Jackpot had portly Bertha Cool lose weight due to a bout with a virus. In December, Double or Quits finds Bertha and her crack investigator Lam taking the day off to go fishing. Learning from her health scare, Bertha becomes determined to make time for self-care.
But another angler at the pier turns out to be Dr. Hilton Deverest, an M.D. with a big problem. Jewels from his safe have disappeared and so has Nollie Starr, his wife’s social secretary. He hires Cool and Lam to find the secretary, get the jewels back, and let Nollie know that the doc will let bygones be bygones. Things get complicated for Cool and Lam when their client is found dead on the floor of his garage with his car engine running.
At this point with the case heating up, Gardner tells the tale of how Lam pressures Bertha to make the agency a partnership. Bertha howls as if stabbed, but agrees after Lam applies psychological judo. The first thing new partner Lam does is boost the wages of the agency secretary Elsie Brand. Not just a pretty name (I had two aunts named Elsie), she is a Gardnerian Ideal Woman: taciturn, loyal, resourceful, quick-witted, kind, and easy on the eye.
The setting and motivations are plausible. The characterization isn’t deep but Gardner gets across that the characters are adults having real-life problems. Dr. and Mrs. Deverest have a marriage so troubled it borders on the sick. The doctor’s niece Nadine Croy is dealing with an ex that is milking her for money. Heartless con men exploit widows’ loneliness and discontent. In a fine scene, Elsie Brand’s cooking appeals to cop’s appetite which proves to be his undoing since after Bertha makes him pay for his mooching a free meal, his nasty inclination to push people around, and his all-round poor judgement. Lam has great interrogation scenes and in one he plays a doctor like a fish, getting him to toss his professional ethics overboard.
More cheering is the relationship that Lam has with Elsie. It is not of the platonic nature of the one between Perry and Della. Near the end of Double or Quits, a nurse solemnly warns Elsie not to be alone with Lam because, under the influence, he might be “abnormally stimulated.”
Gardner writes, “Elsie Brand laughed in her face.”
True, the plotting gets convoluted and the reveal
requires the focus of reading a loan agreement. A key deduction feels
improbable. But this is worth reading just for the enjoyment of the comical
interplay between brainy Lam and hard-charging Bertha, plus of the tender back
and forth between Lam and Elsie. It’s strange how the Cool & Lam novels are
a little hard-boiled and a little cozy at the same time. While the
characterization is not what a hardcore reader of Faulkner would call strong,
the characters are the best thing going for it.
