Bertha Cool and Donald Lam are barely keeping their PI firm afloat when John Billings II waltzes into Betha’s office, offering the firm $300 to track down two girls he was with a few nights before because he badly needs an alibi. Billings loves to party hard and was not killed, and the moll, well, she’s gone up in smoke, and Billings needs Cool and Lam to the two girls he was in the last person seen with a gangster’s moll. The gangster was shot, but not killed and the moll, well, she’s gone up in smoke and Billings needs Cool and Lam to the two girls he was in seedy motel in San Francisco with so he has an alibi for the police and to get him out of the soup with the gangster. Billings offers $500 to sweeten the deal when the girls are found and the affidavits are signed.
Donald Lam flies to San Francisco and finds the girls, one a manicurist and the other girl hanging on to wealthy men, quickly. A little too quickly and after a few slick interviews, their story: that they drove up around San Francisco, tricked Billings into paying the motel bill, and then drugged him so he’d fall asleep before any hanky-panky fell apart.
It turns out Billings paid the girls to fabricate an alibi, and Donald Lam wants to know why. When Lam tells Cool that they’ve played a major role in a cover-up, she tells him to get out of it and come back to Los Angeles on the next plane so they can get their money and get out of the affair, but Lam has other ideas.
Lam stays in San Fransico and confronts Billings at his home about the false alibi. Billings explodes, rescinding his money and telling Cool that the check is no good now. Cool, in a fit of rage, dissolves the partnership with Lam, leaving him stranded and without funds.
Lam, desperate for money, wires his secretary Elsie Brand with his last bit of money for help, and she gives him her life savings to fund his investigation into what really happened the night John Billings II wants too badly to be all sewn up. What Lam discovers is shocking: a murder on a yacht, a shady mining operation that is funneling money through a shell game for unknown reasons, and a gambling house called The Green Door are all in criminal activity up to their necks and to keep everything under wraps, John Billings II would pay his vast fortune to keep everyone from looking at him.
The Review
This is my first Cool and Lam book, and it was a tremendous little hardboiled mystery. Donald Lam, a small, wiry man who can size up a liar in the blink of an eye and fight guys twice his size with his brain and fists, was a likable character. He’s also a sight more morally straight than most of his PI counterparts such as Marlowe. Lam is driven by the truth and gives up his job, his financial security, and almost his life to unravel a den of criminality in San Francisco. His sense of duty to what is right is strong, he is parsimonious with Elsie Brand’s money and invests her savings into mining shares which will make her a fortune.
Sadly, his partner, Bertha Cool, is barely in this book; she bookends the novel by shouting in anger at Lam and is entirely out of the action since she’s manning the office in Los Angeles. This is Donald Lam’s adventure; Bertha Cool is just set dressing.
A.A. Fair packs a lot into every page for such a slim book. There’s a shady mining corporation owned by George Bishop that ends up dead and is tied into laundering money through The Green Door, except the latest mine isn’t worthless; it’s actually chockablock full of gold; when Bishop attempts to cash out of his partnership with The Green Door, he’s ruthlessly killed. What does this have to do with John Billings II forging an alibi, you ask…well you’ll have to read and find out.
On Lam’s way, there’s lots of punching up, dames, hard-drinking, and patter. I hope you really like the slick chatter of gangsters and rich men because you’re going to hear a lot of it. It was, at times, a bit much, but it kept the pace of the novel moving along like a fist to the mouth.
Top of the Heap is a fast-talking, fast-paced book, and if you’re not paying attention, you might lose the plot, which is twisted and redoubles itself over and over. It’s convoluted but in the best sense of the word. The tangled web of interconnected white-collar crimes ameliorating large dens of criminal underworlds is fascinating.
Top of the Heap was a blast to read, and I am trying not to pick up another book in the series right away.
A.A. Fair Biography
A.A. Fair is the pseudonym used by the prolific American author Erle Stanley Gardner. Born on July 17, 1889, in Malden, Massachusetts, Gardner is best known for creating the iconic fictional lawyer and detective Perry Mason. However, under the pen name A.A. Fair, Gardner wrote a series of detective novels featuring the character Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.
Gardner began his career as a lawyer but found his true passion in writing. He published his first Perry Mason novel, “The Case of the Velvet Claws,” in 1933, which became an instant success. Over the years, Gardner wrote a total of 82 Perry Mason novels, numerous short stories, and other novels under various pseudonyms.
The Bertha Cool and Donald Lam series, written under the A.A. Fair pseudonym, features a unique blend of humor, mystery, and fast-paced action. Bertha Cool is a tough, no-nonsense private investigator, while Donald Lam is her young, resourceful and often underestimated assistant. The series was immensely popular and contributed to Gardner’s overall literary success.
Erle Stanley Gardner passed away on March 11, 1970, leaving behind a rich legacy of legal thrillers and detective fiction that continues to captivate readers around the world. His contributions to the mystery genre, both through his Perry Mason novels and the A.A. Fair series, have earned him a lasting place in literary history.
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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