Fri 22 May 2020
A. A. FAIR – Double or Quits. Donald Lam & Bertha Cool #5. Morrow, hardcover, 1941. Dell #160, mapback edition, 1947. Reprinted many times since.
If a man working in a garage on his car’s engine is later found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning, the insurance would have to pay off double on his accidental death, right? Erle Stanley Gardner, writing under his A. A. Fair pen name, shows us how the wording of all life insurance policies says that the answer is no. No double indemnity, unless Donald Lam can come up with something.
Unfortunately, this bit of legal expertise is the high point of this rather complicated affair involving a whole household of suspects and more horsing around than clue gathering. Lam incidentally weasels Berth Cool into giving him a partnership in their detective agency, but in general he gets himself out too far ahead of the evidence. I’d say he bungles the case; at any rate he doesn’t exactly shine.
Rating: C minus.
May 22nd, 2020 at 3:44 pm
Was I too hard on this one? I don’t know. 1977 is too far in the past for me to remember, and I haven’t read it since. Anyone else more recently than I?
May 22nd, 2020 at 4:43 pm
I read a couple of the Hard Case Crime reprints and they were pretty bad.
May 22nd, 2020 at 7:05 pm
Most readers seem to like the Fair books more than the Perry Mason’s, but in general, not me. Even so, I don’t remember rating one of the Fair’s this low before.
May 22nd, 2020 at 9:40 pm
This may be a matter of taste. Lam and Cool are my favorite Gardner characters, largely because he is clearly having fun writing them where later Mason seem a bit more like work, but no doubt the Mason plots are tighter and less reliant on how much you enjoy goading Bertha and outwitting Frank Sellars, which I enjoy quite a bit along with Donald’s wise ass mouth.
May 22nd, 2020 at 9:50 pm
I don’t think so, but is it possible that Gardner came up with Bertha’s favorite catch phrase, “Well, fry me for an oyster!”?
May 23rd, 2020 at 10:47 am
HARD CASE CRIME is reprinting SHILLS CAN’T CASH CHIPS by
Erle Stanley Gardner in September 2020. I agree with David on ESG’s having fun with Bertha and Donald Lam’s snarky quips.
May 23rd, 2020 at 11:47 am
I haven’t purchased any of the Hard Case Crime editions of the A. A. Fair books, since I own them all in various paperback editions, but it’s good to know that they’re still doing them. There must be an audience for them!