The Bigger They Come

Gardner is best known for the 80+ novels he wrote featuring Perry Mason, but he also wrote (under the pseudonym A.A. Fair) 30 novels about the Cool & Lam detective agency; this is the first of those, published in 1939.

Bertha Cool is a 60-ish widow who runs the agency she founded after her husband's death. She is a large woman, in both height and weight; Gardner's descriptions of her size are less mean-spirited (*) than they might have been in that era, but it's referred to a lot. That is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that Bertha herself is what we might today call "fat-positive;" she likes to eat, isn't embarrassed about it, and tells people "Don't be bashful; I'm fat."

(*--Note that "less mean-spirited" doesn't mean not show more mean-spirited. It's hard not to wince at sentences like "She wiggled and jiggled around inside her loose apparel like a cylinder of currant jelly on a plate." But in 1939? It could have been even worse.)

Donald Lam is the narrator of the novel, which opens with his job interview. He's not typical private eye material himself; he's short and slender, and not a good fighter by his own admission. What he has going for him is intellect and a skill for analysis.

The case at hand starts off simply enough. Donald is tasked with tracking down a man in order to serve him with divorce papers; the problem is that the man is wanted by the police, and has done a very good job of hiding himself.

Of course, it doesn't stay that simple, and by the time we're done, Gardner has ended with a doozy of a twist, based on an actual loophole in Arizona law of the day; after the book was published, the state legislature promptly passed legislation to solve the problem.

The great strength here is the relationship between Cool and Lam. They're both used to being underestimated, and have both learned to stand up for themselves, which makes the dynamic between them a little more prickly than your typical employer-employee pairing. Donald challenges Bertha, and she respects him for it.

And unlike a lot of crime fiction (including, for the most part, the Perry Mason novels), Cool and Lam are funny. Their banter is lively, crisp, and witty. I can easily imagine going back for more of this series. show less

“And don’t mind me when I cuss,” Mrs. Cool went on, “because I like profanity, loose clothes, and loose talk.”

The first Cool and Lam mystery! The strength of this story is the relationship and chemistry between the two characters! Cool is the boss, a large lady with a sharp tongue and brusk personality. Lam is "a little too small to be a detective" with somewhat of a mysterious, and possibly shady background. They actually make a pretty good, and readable team!

And this story was just that, for a time. But from page 179 on, the story was confusing. Lam goes to AZ, for reasons to be explained later, but in the course of the story, it was just a bunch of nonsense. I actually began to wonder if I had missed that an entirely show more different story had been added to this book. Like I said, it does become connected to the whole plotline, but I felt like it was totally unnecessary. And yes, I now understand why Lam did all of that nonsense, I just didn't enjoy reading about it. However, I will give this duo another try, as I think their relationship has a good deal of potential for further stories. show less

This one is of interest almost exclusively as the Cool and Lam origin story... the plot, characters, and ultimate resolution are less interesting and less satisfying than we would come to expect in later books in the series.

The Bigger They Come is the first book in what would eventually become a thirty book series over a thirty year span from 1939 to 1970 (not counting Hard Case's lost novel The Knife Slipped published in 2016). The essence of the Cool and Lam series is a mismatched pair of detectives, which includes big Bertha Cool (originally 300 pounds but later a svelte 165 pounds) and brainy but scrawny Donald Lam. This novel introduces the two characters and brings them together.

This one is perhaps a bit lighter in tone than later books in the series and, for those of us who didn't start reading at the beginning of the series, it's real interesting to see how the characters started out and what they later became.

Here, Lam is very young, green, wet show more behind the ears, and not at all sure of himself either as a detective or with women. His background as a disbarred lawyer is emphasized and this one is resolved in a Perry Mason like legal way which makes you wonder if Gardner's original intent was to sort of repeat the success he had with the Perry Mason series just in a different setting. Perhaps the fact Gardner published this under the pseudonym AA Fair is a hint as to what his intentions were.

In later books in the series, Lam has a real confidence about him and his abilities and even Bertha realizes that he's the real detective of the two. This is not the best of the series, but it's an enjoyable read. It's unfortunate that most of this series is not available in e-book format yet as a little effort and perhaps a library Card is needed to find some of the volumes in this series. show less

A bit too hard-boiled for my taste--I'm not quite sure why most of the attractive women threw themselves at our 130 pound hero--it really reads like something written for men, not women (not that I'm a woman, but it's the 21st century and I still notice. I expect more. (I know, it's an earlier time, but better writers, earlier than that, manage to create wonderful real women in their pages)).

The plot picked up about 3/4 of the way through, but until then it all seemed like set-up. Not thrilled, and probably won't seek out the next one.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

While I enjoyed Bertha Cool and the way she runs her detective agency, I swear the plot is the same as one of the Perry Mason's, though I've never been able to figure out which one.

The Bigger They Come: A Cool and Lam Mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-PRINT: COPYRIGHT: (January 1, 1939) 10/4/2022; ISBN: 9781613163566; PUBLISHER: Penzler Publishers; PAGES: 227; UNABRIDGED (Paperback info from Goodreads)
-*DIGITAL: COPYRIGHT: (1/1/1939) 10/4/2022; ISBN: 9781613163573; PUBLISHER: American Mystery Classics / Simon & Schuster; PAGES: 251; UNABRIDGED
-AUDIO: COPYRIGHT: Not found
Feature Film or tv: Not found

SERIES: Cool and Lam #1

MAIN CHARACTERS: (list not comprehensive)
Bertha Cool - Owner of detective agency
Donald Lam – hired by Bertha
Alma Hunter – Friend of client of the Cool detective agency
Sandra Birks – Client of the detective agency
Morgan Birks – husband of the client of the detective show more agency
The Chief – a criminal
Fred – an employee of the Chief’s
Bleatie – Sandra’s brother (sort of)

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-SELECTED: It came to my attention that a television show that I enjoyed as a child, Perry Mason, was based on a series of books by Erle Stanley Gardner, and that a precursor series was Lam & Cool, so I wanted to read the first one of that series.
-ABOUT: Donald Lam competes for employment at a detective agency, and although he doesn’t look the part, Bertha Cool appreciates his imagination and hires him on the spot. He is assigned to a missing person case of sorts—to find a spouse for the purpose of serving divorce papers, but there turns out to be much more to the job.
-LIKED: It was clever and entertaining.
-DISLIKED: NA.
-OVERALL: This has the flavor of mysteries from the decade that it was written, 193o’s.

AUTHOR:
Erle Stanley Gardner
From Wikipedia:
“Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 – March 11, 1970) was a prolific American author. A former lawyer, he is best known for the Perry Mason series of legal detective stories, but he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces and also a series of nonfiction books, mostly narrations of his travels through Baja California and other regions in Mexico.
The best-selling American author of the 20th century at the time of his death, Gardner also published under numerous pseudonyms, including A. A. Fair, Carl Franklin Ruth, Carleton Kendrake, Charles M. Green, Charles J. Kenny, Edward Leaming, Grant Holiday, Kyle Corning, Les Tillray, Robert Parr, Stephen Caldwell, and once as Perry Mason character Della Street (The Case of the Suspect Sweethearts). Three stories were published as Anonymous (A Fair Trial, Part Music and Part Tears, and You Can't Run Away from Yourself aka The Jazz Baby).”

NARRATOR:
N/A

LOCATION(S)
California; Arizona

TIME(S)
1930’s

GENRE
Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Detective

SUBJECTS:
Process Serving; Law; Detectives; Divorce; Crime

DEDICATION:
Not found.

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From “Chapter One”
“Pushing my way into the office, I stood just inside the door, my hat in my hand.
There were six men ahead of me. The ad had said between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. If appearances were any indication, some of them were optimistic liars. For the most part, we were a seedy-looking outfit.
A straw-haired secretary behind a typewriting desk banged away at a typewriter. She looked up at me. Her face as cold as a clean bedsheet.
‘What do you want?’ She asked.
‘I want to see Mr. Cool.’
‘What about?’
I moved my head in a comprehensive gesture to include the half-dozen men who were looking up at me in casually hostile appraisal. ‘I’m answering the ad.’
‘I thought so. Sit down,’ she said.
‘There seems,’ I observed, ‘to be no chair available.’
‘There will be in a minute. You may stand and wait, or come back.’
‘I’ll stand.’
She turned back to her typewriter. A buzzer sounded. She picked up a telephone, listened a moment, said, ‘Very well,’ and looked expectantly at the door which said ‘B. L. Cool, Private.’ The door opened. A man, who looked as though he was trying to get to the open air in a hurry, streaked through the office. The blonde said, ‘You may go in Mr. Smith.’
A young chap with stooped shoulders and slim waist got to his feet, jerked down his vest, adjusted his tie, pinned a smirk on his face, opened the door to the private office, and went in.
The blonde said to me, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Donald Lam.’
‘L-a-m-b?’ she asked.
‘L-a-m,’ I said.
She jotted it down, and then, with her eyes on me, started making shorthand notes under the name. I could see she was cataloguing my personal appearance.
‘That all?’ I asked when she covered me from head to foot with her eyes and finished making pothooks with her fingers.
‘Yes. Sit down in that chair and wait.’
I sat and waited. Smith didn’t last long. He was out in less than two minutes. The second man made the round trip so fast it looked as though he’d come out on the bounce. The third man lasted ten minutes and came out looking dazed. The door of the outer office opened. Three more applicants came in. The blonde took their names, sized them up, and made notes. After they were seated, she picked up the telephone and said laconically, ‘Four more,’ listened a moment, and hung up.
When the next man came out, the blonde went in. She was in there about five minutes. When she came out, she gave me the nod: ‘You may go in next, Mr. Lam,’ she said.
The men who were ahead of me frowned at her and then at me. They didn’t say anything.
Apparently she didn’t mind their frowns any more than I did.
I opened the door, entered a huge room with several filing cabinets, two comfortable chairs, a table, and a big desk.
I put on my best smile, said, ‘Mr. Cool, I—’ and then stopped, because the person seated behind the desk wasn’t a Mister.
She was somewhere in her sixties, with gray hair, twinkling gray eyes, and a benign, grandmotherly expression on her face. She must have weighed over two-hundred. She said, ‘Sit down, Mr. Lam—no, not in that chair. Come over here where I can look at you. There, that’s better. Now, for Christ’s sake, don’t lie to me.’

RATING:.
4

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
8/23/23 – 9/16/23 show less