Shills Can't Cash Chips

This book was a lot of run to read. There's no way you could have had a chance to solve the case before the end as new, significant details are brought in throughout the story. However, if you just give yourself up to the flow of the stor and the situations Donald Lam finds himself in (and how he gets out of them), it's a great read for the genre! I highly recommend.

Another good read in the series! Lam and Cool start investigating a car accident that pretty quickly turns into a murder case! And again, real estate subdivisions are involved, like a previous book in the series. It moves at a good pace but does get a bit convoluted with the car accidents intertwining. By the end, "cool"-er heads prevail, and Lam and Cool come out with their account paid in full!

"The sergeant had a message for me?" I asked.
"Two words," he said. "Drop dead."

Grifters Can't Cash In
Review of the Hard Case Crime paperback (2020) reissue of the William Morrow & Co. hardcover original (1961)

The title Shills Can't Cash Chips didn't seem to have anything to do with the plot which instead of being related to some kind of casino scam was instead about the investigation of a possible insurance scam which turns into a murder mystery.

Despite featuring a quirky detective agency duo, this didn't make any great impression in terms of plot or hardboiled dialogue, let alone getting anywhere close to the cynical poetical expressions of Raymond Chandler and his Philip Marlowe (somehow Cool's signature line of "Fry me for an oyster" doesn't quite ring true for the hardboiled genre). Pint sized 5'3" Donald Lam show more operates without a gun and is apparently frequently beat up and the more formidable Bertha Cool has to ride to the rescue when fisticuffs are required. Despite thinking he has the case figured out early, Lam instead needs an 11th hour surprise alternative to bring a solution to the situation.

See cover at https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1608876171...
Cover image of the original 1961 William Morrow and Co. hardcover. Image sourced from Goodreads.

This is #22 in the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam Detective Agency series by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) (also famous for the Perry Mason Lawyer series) originally published under the pseudonym of A. A. Fair. Hard Case Crime has reissued 4 of the original books (#2, #13, #18, #22) and one posthumous "lost" original (squeezed in now as #1.5, the original proposed 2nd book as it was rejected by the publishers and thought lost until 2016). The back cover synopsis describes #22 as "a fitting conclusion to Hard Case Crime's revival of this classic (and long unavailable) detective series", so presumably they have finished selecting what they considered the best of the series for reissue.

I picked up Shills Can't Cash Chips while looking for Gardner's Perry Mason novels which also appear to be hard to locate these days. This was part of my ongoing investigation of the hardboiled and noir genre and of the Golden Age of Crime novels and writers.

Trivia and Links
This edition of Shills Can't Cash Chips is part of the Hard Case Crime (2004-) series of reprints, new commissions and posthumous publications of the pulp and noir crime genre founded by authors Charles Ardai and Max Phillips. GR's Listopia is not complete (as of April 2022) and the most current lists of publication can be found at Wikipedia or the Publisher's own Official Site.

There is a Wikipedia entry for the Cool and Lam series which includes brief plot synopses for all 30 books which you can read here. show less

One of the better Cool/Lams. The book uses several previously used plot devices but in such a way as to make it fresher and more urgent. Gardner also uses some current events in the way of his TV show as part of the plot.

The story was kind of blah, there was no atmosphere, no mood. It was a bland detective novel. There was plenty of misogyny though, to the point of being almost comedic in the first third of the book. Nothing else in the book was particularly noteworthy and the central mystery hinged on insurance fraud so again, blah. Overall, I'm not angry I read it nor am I glad I did. It was just meh.

A.A. Fair was just one of a number of names that Earl Stanly Gardner wrote under. He sold a lot of books in his lifetime, Gardner lives from 1889 to 1970. The characters in Shills Can't Cash Chips was one of thirty or so books about the Cool and Lam Detective Agency. Rather formulaic and predictable though I didn't guess the who-done-it at all. Cool and Lam are retained to investigate a possible insurance fraud and find other things. Lots of tough talking men and seductive acting women in this story. It is clearly from another time and doesn't compare well with other mystery writers.