Turn on the Heat

Turn on the Heat is one of the earliest books in Erle Stanley Gardner's Cool and Lam series, originally published under the name AA Fair. It's a story about how a few odd clues can lead to a bigger picture. It starts out with Lam being the stranger in a small town on his own ferreting out old secrets about a twenty year old disappearance and the vague and minute clues about what happened to the woman. But what really makes this book is that it doesn't end there but morphs into a far more complex tale about broken marriages, political mischief, nightclubs, and big city corruption. It's not a bang-bang shoot-em-up tale so much as it's a clever wit against wit tale with each party taking what they know and "turning up the heat" on the other.

I am a big fan of the Donald Lam / Bertha Cool series, and I found this early novel to be one of the better books in the series. These stories are entertaining, funny, and quick witted; they offer great characters and an interesting historical setting (to me anyway, as someone who grew up in Los Angeles a few decades later).

This one starts as a missing person case, but things quickly turns to murder, blackmail, dirty cops and corrupt politicians. The innocent lie to Donald every bit as much as the guilty. it's up to Donald to stay one step ahead of the law (both the dirty cops and those merely trying to do their job) while he sorts through myriad possible explanations for a very puzzling series of events. And of course there's a sweet show more young girl who falls for Donald like a ton of bricks. show less

Not as good as the book that was supposed to be number two in this series, but a decent read. It had all the elements - a messy divorce, a murder, switched identities, corrupt city government, crooked cops, and several dicey characters. And Cool and Lam right in the middle of it all.
What it lacked was brevity. I think it was at least fifty pages too long. There are lots of apartment and room changes, lots of driving around, and lots of talking about things rather than doing them. And again, WAY too much of Betha calling Donald 'lover'! That is the thing that grates on me for all these books so far!
But, I have "Fools Die on Friday" on my to-read shelf, so I'm not totally annoyed...

Turn on the Heat is one of the earliest books in Erle Stanley Gardner's Cool and Lam series, originally published under the name AA Fair. It's a story about how a few odd clues can lead to a bigger picture. It starts out with Lam being the stranger in a small town on his own ferreting out old secrets about a twenty year old disappearance and the vague and minute clues about what happened to the woman. But what really makes this book is that it doesn't end there but morphs into a far more complex tale about broken marriages, political mischief, nightclubs, and big city corruption. It's not a bang-bang shoot-em-up tale so much as it's a clever wit against wit tale with each party taking what they know and "turning up the heat" on the other.

Turn on the Heat by A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

A man going by Mr. Smith is searching for his missing wife, he comes to Donald Lam and his partner Bertha Cool for help. Secrets, mystery, intrigue abound as Lam and Cool track down the mystery behind this disappearance.

Written in 1940, with engaging dialog moving at a fast pace. Lam and Cool are likable, they work well with each other. Bertha is a bold woman, ahead of her time. Lam is great with the ladies. A perfect pair to uncover a decades old mystery. I highly recommend Turn on the Heat to those who enjoy 'pulp fiction'.

Turn on the Heat is a decent read, though a bit hard to follow a lot of the time. It has all the elements of a whodunnit, but unlike a lot of crime fiction I read, also has the main character actively manipulating events about which he doesn’t always have complete information. Gardner made this main character, Donald Lam, into an anti-caricature. Lam is mouthy, but he’s a scrawny runt, and so he gets his ass handed to him a few times in the book. I’m also not particularly fond of the way female characters come off in the book.

Definitely mixed.

Det här andra boken i Cool and Lam-serien. Jag har inte läst den första eftersom jag inte har den i min ägo (än) och efter att ha läst den här blir jag lite mer sugen på att läsa den första. Vi märker att Bertha och Donald har inte har jobbat ihop så länge och här är det fortfarande Bertha som äger firman, hon försöker bestämma lite mer och lägga sig i mer vad Donald har för sig än hon har gjort i de andra böckerna i serien som jag har läst. En trevlig serie!