Double or Quits

Whether in his Perry Mason series or in this Donald Lam/Bertha Cool series, Erle Stanley Gardner was fond of creating plots that revolved around extended wealthy families, living in large houses with chauffeurs and a couple of maids. Usually, there was a patriarch of some sort, often with a wife tha......more

I was on a brief trip to D.C. this past week & I finished the book that I had taken with me, prompting a visit to Second Story Books in DuPont Circle, where I came upon an early-1970s paperback edition of this book. It proved to be an engrossingly quick read & I was able to guess at some of the plot......more

Where have Cool & Lam been all my life? What an inspired combination for a detective agency and a great mystery with which to meet them! I read four short stories in a row by Earle Stanley Gardner (A.A. Fair's real name) in the Big Book of Rogues and Villains. I'd never taken a cotton to Perry Mason......more

This is my first experience with the work of Erle Stanley Gardner, supposedly the king of American mystery fiction, and I am a bit disappointed with it. The plot is loose and there are quite a few side characters with schemes of their own. The process of detection doesn't feel convincing enough. And......more

What I liked about this episode in the Lam-Cool series is that we got to know the secretary, Elsie Brand, better. Also, where Gardner often shines as a writer is his mastery over legal technicalities. Here the interpretation of insurance law is fascinating, and, indeed, gives the book its title. A s......more