Note: 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. Though not a fan of comparisons, I think that Fair’s Cool and Lam novels are smarter, sexier, wittier and just more entertaining than Gardner’s Perry Mason novels.
Top of the Heap – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair
John Carver Billings II strode into Cool and Lam’s office doing his damnedest to seem confident.
He told a story as shaky as his hands. His date Maurine vanished after a party where Billings played escort. Slipped away with someone else. For most men, a bruised ego. For Billings, a big problem.
Because hours later, Gabby Garvanza - Maurine's dangerous boyfriend - was shot. Gabby is lying in a hospital bed, riddled with bullets, and the police are circling. Billings needs an alibi but fast.
Billings claims he spent the night with two other women. By morning, they were gone too. Three women missing. Coincidence - or is Fate teeing up John the Second?
What follows is classic Gardner in a case that starts simple and twists into a maze of lies and greed. Lam's PI partner Bertha Cool smells money. Three hundred dollars already paid in retainer, five hundred more promised. Simple job: find the girls, clear Billings. Lam sees the cracks, the details that don’t fit. And with his every step, the ground shifts. Mining assets, they call them. Lam knows better and follows his usual inclination not to tell anybody - not the reader; certainly not Bertha - what he suspects is afoot.
Top of the Heap exemplifies Gardner’s signature formula: murder as a side effect of scams and schemes gone sideways. Bertha Cool, a comic miser in the Mr. Krabs mold, clashes hilariously with Lam’s understated brilliance. His quiet finesse and patient listening make him irresistible to women - despite his short stature and Bertha’s stingy pay.
Hard Case Crime’s 2004 reissue was a masterstroke, rescuing a gem that proves Gardner’s Cool and Lam novels deserve a place beside the best of hardboiled fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment