Give 'em the Ax

I loved these Donald Lam / Bertha Cool stories when I first read them as a teen in the 1970s. Recently I borrowed my mom's more or less complete set and have been gradually re-reading them. Even if they feel somewhat dated today, they're still a lot of fun. And looking back, I can certainly understand why they appealed so much to me at time.

This one starts with Donald's sudden return from the War (due to a bug picked up on a South Pacific island). He had enlisted and shipped off suddenly two books earlier to evade the misguided efforts of Detective Frank Sellars to pin a murder on him. Donald and Bertha have barely had time to get in a good argument when in drops yet another nubile young client of dubious virtue and Donald is off on show more the case. As we've come to expect from these stories, someone soon turns up dead, and all the evidence seems to point to Donald and/or a lustful but innocent young lady (or perhaps both in collaboration).

This may not be among the best of the series, with a solution that felt a bit more contrived than usual. Nonetheless, a fun read. show less

Erle Stanley Gardner is, of course, most famous for his Perry Mason series. He did, however, publish thirty novels in the Cool and Lam private eye series, twenty nine of them between 1939 and 1970, and next month The Knife Slipped, a lost novel. It's a terrific series featuring the original odd couple pairing of Bertha Lam, greedy, overweight, given to yelling and screaming, with the slight person of Donald Lam, clever, and almost Holmes-like in his powers of seductive reasoning. Lam is more of your typical Hardboiled detective and Cool is almost there for comic relief.

This particular novel has Lam returning from Navy duty, although still suffering from tropical illnesses. A most unusual, but sensous, client appears and they take on a show more convoluted case involving a club for afternoon affairs, a lovesick secretary, a cigarette girl with legs that just went on forever, an axe murderer, an awful fender bender, and a suspicious police detective.

This is a quick and easy read and skillfully combines Hardboiled pulp detective fiction with lighter detective fare. show less