Sun 31 May 2026
Diary PI Mystery Review: A. A. FAIR -Widows Wear Weeds.
Posted by Steve under Uncategorized[5] Comments
A. A. FAIR -Widows Wear Weeds. PI’s Donald Lam & Bertha Cool #27. William Morrow, hardcover, 1966. Dell, paperback, date?. Reprinted several times since.
Donald Lam is hired to stop a blackmailer from making more demands, or so he thinks. The blackmail is fake, intended to establish an alibi, but it creates ideas which prove to be fatal for the would-be blackmailer. The murder scene is set up to be embarrassing for Sergeant Sellers, and Donald will have no part of the policeman’s subsequent story.
There is a definite need for the suspension of disbelief in reading stories such as this. The characters carry on, year after year, almost as if no earlier stories had ever been written. Sellers and Hamilton Burger fight to nail the hides of Lam and Perry Mason to the wall, grudgingly accept defeat (and victory for justice), then go right back at it.
Disbelief fails in this case. Sellers beats Lam up in his frustration, but they remain on the same quasi-friendly terms as always.Terribly padded, even for the extremely short length.
Rating: **
May 31st, 2026 at 12:17 pm
My opinion has varied over the years, but I think that more often than not, I have liked the Mason stories more the Lam-Cool books. From the reviews I have read written by other readers, though, I think I may be in the minority on this.
June 1st, 2026 at 7:24 am
I like them both, but the edge goes to the Cool-Lam series, which were always faster paced. Mason’s courtroom interrogations, while necessary and interesting, usually slowed down the story.
One thing I did not care for, in both series, was the extent of revisionism imposed by (I assume, the publishers, or perhaps Gardner himself), often to erase the original pulpish tropes. Gardner would clean up the Steppin Fetchit dialog of Black characters in later editions, as well as some non-PC Oriental dialog. In the Cool-Lam books, Donald’s military service was revised to fit a more current timeline — again, something that did not sit well with me.
June 1st, 2026 at 2:34 pm
Whereas for me it’s the courtroom scenes in the Mason books that I look forward to. We can’t all be fond of the same thing. It never happens.
I never knew about the updates in Gardner’s books, though. I can understand it even while not being happy about it. If it’s the author that’s doing the upgrading — or with his/her approval — I am happier than if other hands are involved.
June 6th, 2026 at 3:28 am
Both this and the last Mason you reviewed are from 1966, it seems to be a bad year for you and Gardner.
I gave Gardner even more leeway of the Cool and Lam books than with Mason. By this point both resembled Kabuki theater to the extent the formalized nature of the story was a part of the appeal.
June 6th, 2026 at 2:16 pm
Looking at my notes in the 4″ by 8″ notebook these old reviews are in, I have a feeling that the stories came together in one of those two-in-one volumes the Detective Book Club used to entice new members into signing up. The two books were from the same year, so similar in that regard, but no other connection.
But you are right, though. that by the time the two entries came out, a good part of their appeal was how familiar the formalized settings were.