Try Anything Once by Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
Besides writing 80-some Perry Mason novels under his own name, Erle Stanley Gardner wrote under his pen name A. A. Fair books starring the PI team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. The Cool & Lam plots are as convoluted as the Mason stories and the cops come off just as unmindful of proper procedure and derisive about the idea of civil rights. However, the tone is lighter, sexier, and funnier.
Donald Lam takes the helm as first-person narrator. Though he tells the reader he takes time out to think, he never tells the content of his thoughts. His caginess stands in contrast Archie Goodwin’s usual admission that he has no idea of what Nero Wolfe, a genius, is thinking.
In this 1962 mystery, an agitated husband hires Cool & Lam to impersonate him so his wife will not find out he was at a swanky motel with a cocktail waitress. At the time he was sneaking and cheating, a high-profile murder was committed at the same motel and the homicide squad is looking for potential witnesses.
Lam, as his wont, senses a rat and gets into trouble with rich influential people and the cops. Bertha provides comic diversion and muscle, in a neat upending of the stereotypical sensitive female and brawny male. Gardner returns to his ongoing theme of the problems of young single city women, who have their, uh, physical needs, and changing social standards.
Other Cool & Lam novels have more action. This has recapitulations of action that are rather unusual for Gardner, who usually moved plots along briskly. Still, I recommend it to both novices and fans of the characters – there are wonderful scenes with Lam and Elsie Brand.
