Sat 25 May 2024
A 1001 Midnights PI Review: A. A. FAIR – Owls Don’t Blink.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[12] Comments
by Marcia Muller
A. A. FAIR – Owls Don’t Blink. Bertha Cool & Donald Lam #6. Morrow, hardcover, 1942. Reprinted many times, including Dell 211, mapback edition, 1940s, and Dell R101, paperback, October 1961.
A. A. Fair is a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, but don’t pick up one of these novels featuring private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam expecting a couple of carbon copies of Paul Drake. Cool and Lam are an amusing and endearing pair — perfect foils for one another.
Bertha Cool, at the time of this novel. is the middle-aged proprietor of an L.A. investigative firm, pared down to a mere 165 pounds but ever on the alert for a good meal. Her partner, Donald Lam, is a twerp in comparison — young, slender, and forever on the defensive for what Bertha considers excessive squandering of agency money. But there’s considerable affection between the two, and with Donald doing the legwork, they crack some tough cases-and have a lot of fun while doing so.
Owls Don’t Blink opens in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where Donald is occupying an apartment once rented by a missing woman he has been hired to find. He is due to meet Bertha at the airport at 7:20 the next morning and knows there will be hell to pay if he’s late. Fortunately. he arrives on time. and together they meet the New York lawyer who has hired them to find Roberta Fenn. a former model.
Over a number of pecan waffles — a number for Bertha. that is, who only eats “once a day” — the lawyer is evasive about why he wishes to locate Miss Fenn. But Cool and Lam proceed with the case-and Bertha proceeds with several lavish meals, still on that same day.
The discovery of the missing woman’s whereabouts proves all too easy, and also too easy is the discovery of a corpse in Roberta Fenn’s new apartment. But from there on out, everything’s as convoluted as in the best of the Perry Mason novels. The scene moves from New Orleans to Shreveport, Louisiana, and from there to Los Angeles, where its surprising (although possibly a little out-of-leftfield) conclusion takes place.
And there’s a nice twist in the Cool-Lam relationship that will make a reader want to read the later entries in this fine series, such as Crows Can’t Count (1946), Some Slips Don’t Show (1957), Fish or Cut Bait (1963), and All Grass Isn’t Green (1970). Especially entertaining earlier titles are The Bigger They Come (1939) and Spill the Jackpot (1941).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
May 25th, 2024 at 11:52 pm
For a second opinion of this book, as if you need one, this one’s a good one:
https://theinvisibleevent.com/2023/04/27/owls-dont-blink-aa-fair/
Here are a couple of excerpts:
“…the chapter about two-thirds of the way through where he lays out three possible interpretations for the events to that stage might be the most ingeniously twisty thing Gardner ever put on paper…and that, as you may be aware, is saying something. The plot is thin, sure, but that disarming simplicity lends itself to a clever multiple reframings which surprise in all the best ways.”
And this is unusual, he reviews the *physical* aspects of the book itself, being the one of the third image down (up above):
“Damn, Dell really knew what they were doing when they produced these books: they’re immensely satisfying from a tactile perspective, the print is clean and easy to read, there’s none of that overcrowded text you get when a publisher has tried to bash something out cheaply, and it just feels like a lovely book in every single way you could interpret that emotion.”
Nicely done!
May 26th, 2024 at 12:00 am
Steve,
Have you a preference between hardcover and paperback, I do?
May 26th, 2024 at 1:07 am
I always preferred paperbacks over hardcovers, mostly because they were cheaper, but the covers were a lot more colorful. (I just sold a paperback on eBay for $67, and I know it was because a bit of bosom was showing, not for the reading value of what was inside.)
But I think Dell paperbacks were always my favorites. They were easy to look at, easy to hold, and in some ineffable way, easy to read.
May 26th, 2024 at 12:02 am
That last is astutely observed. Some publishing houses were identifiable by a ‘trademark style’ of particularly crisp, easy-to-read typeface, generous margins, and handsome page format. I used to keep some paperback editions around for years, based on their look’n’feel and my fondness for the hours I had spent with them perched upright between my meat hooks.
May 26th, 2024 at 1:10 am
Well said, Lazy. Your comment arrived while I was typing my reply to Barry. We are definitely on the same page when it comes to what we love about old paperbacks.
May 26th, 2024 at 6:05 pm
re: #5 Thx! ‘On the same page’ is quite the apt expression.
Something else about print books too, was that just the sight of them can inspire young readers. That’s something lost now with e-books.
But it was beyond counting how many times as a kid, I noticed an exotic-seeming book and reached for it, due to its cover. At a neighbor’s house, or a yard sale, or even one held by a stranger seated beside me on a bus. Motivation for me to borrow or buy a copy.
One time as a tyke I was assisting grown-ups with a county book sale. No pay for my labor, but was granted ‘dibs’ on as many books as I could physically stagger away with. The custodian unlocked a storage-room door which opened onto an enormous pile of donated books. Inside, the paperbacks were heaped three-feet-high, wall-to-wall. Drifts were chest-high on me. I spent hours crawling over the mound, picking out titles. What magic!
And completely unregulated ’cause they didn’t think to check over what I nabbed. I scarpered away with all sorts of ‘True Detective’ and other forbidden fare.
May 26th, 2024 at 8:04 pm
A day of fantasy come true!
May 26th, 2024 at 9:32 pm
But to get back to the book at hand, here’s the true lowdown on the title, according to Google:
“Unlike humans or some other animals, owls do not blink frequently. In fact, they have a unique adaptation that allows them to minimize the need for blinking. Owls have large and tubular-shaped eyes that are equipped with a high number of rod cells, specialized for low-light vision.”
How Mr. Gardner (aka Fair) knew that in 1942, before the Internet came along, I don’t know.
May 26th, 2024 at 9:34 pm
I read the book too long ago to know the answer to this question, but perhaps some of you have read it more recently than I:
Are there any owls in this book?
May 28th, 2024 at 9:45 am
In the story, the attorney that hires our detectives compliments Donald – for being observant, as I recall – by referring to him as an “owl.”
May 28th, 2024 at 9:49 am
A figurative metaphor then, not a real bird. Thanks, Floyd. I don’t know why I wanted to know, but I did, and now I do. At least in BATS FLY AT DUSK, there were real bats in the story. If it matters to anyone but me.
May 31st, 2024 at 10:01 pm
Gardner, if I recall was an ardent outdoorsman so no doubt had some experience with wildlife, and his fan base was wide enough that there were likely experts on just about anything among his readers. I got the impression that he was fairly widely read in many areas and not just a good researcher.
Re the feel of old paperbacks and design there was a time you could spot the publisher from across the room just from the look of the book. Reading a Dell book was different from reading a Bantam or NAL title.
In the day the average hardcover wasn’t as bulky or clumsy as they are today so you didn’t have to worry about dropping the damn thing and breaking a toe. But I agree much of the appeal of Dell paperbacks was in the design and not just the fine choice of titles.