With considerations of the era taking Donald Lam out of the Cool and Lam Detective Agency, Bertha Cool is left to fend for herself when a blind man wishes to hire her services in tracking down a young woman who, he claims, has disappeared. It’s an unusual jumping-off point in itself, but the real delight here is how intelligently Erle Stanley Gardner, writing under his A.A. Fair nom de plume, explores and explains the way the blind man is able to identify so many different people — and how intelligently he is able to come to conclusions about the woman whose wellbeing is his concern. And then others start to express an interest in the same woman; and then someone is murdered…
Bats Fly at Dusk (1942), the seventh published novel to feature Gardner’s detectival duo — yes, Donald’s in there, we’ll get to that — starts strongly and, as with the best of the series, doesn’t let up until the final page. Indeed, the absence of Donald isn’t anything like the hindrance that might be suspected: the shift to third-person narrative introduces the enjoyable element of seeing Bertha in a more active role, and Donald’s able to share his insights anyway via telegrams in response to letters Bertha sends him in order to get his thoughts on a case that swiftly confounds her.
As with so much of this series, little matters of law take on huge significance, and it’s difficult not to feel at this point that Gardner is just mixing up whatever complications he can imagine as a thought exercise to see what might fall out in said situation. “That’s my opinion, or rather, it’s my interpretation of the law,” Walton A. Doolitle, Attorney at Law tells Bertha upon processing the second legal complication the case throws up, and if he’s not a mouthpiece for the author than fry me for an oyster, pickle me for a herring, and can me for a sardine. At this point, Gardner’s just having fun, and it shows.
You can see it in his minor character descriptions…
The man whom Elsie Brand escorted into Bertha Cool’s private office seemed to be trying to get through life by expending the least possible effort. He had a semi-pretzel posture as though neck, shoulders, hips, and legs all seemed afraid they would support more than their fair share of the weight
…in the difficulties that arise by having Donald out of the picture for once…
“I should have kept on doing business in the routine way. But Donald is such a reckless little runt, and he did such daring damn things, he got me into bad habits.”
…and in the delight Donald seems to take in being consulted time and again, forcing Gardner to apply his own loophole-rich brain to a new form of plot construction so that things can still speed along and misdirect you in the very classic way that these books do. Hell, this is the second time I’ve read this one and I still got fooled by the core misdirection, that’s how much I was enjoying myself — it might feel a little light in terms of plotting, but wait until you get to the final stages and everything flips, flips again, and then flips a third time and you’ll realise how adroitly Gardner plotted with the best of them while still putting out six books a year.
And, of course, he writes wonderfully, with blind man Rodney Kosling by no means a cheap, mawkish, or token inclusion, instead brought to life by delightful small touches — the way the title comes into play in the events that unfold is a chef’s kiss of a conceit — and very much the heart of the novel:
“Perhaps you don’t realize how humdrum and routine our lives become. It’s a peculiar type of loneliness. We’re in the middle of a big city. People stream past us. We get so we know them. We hear their steps, recognize them almost as definitely as though we could see them; but they never speak to us. When they do, it’s just a patronizing little expression of sympathy. You’d prefer they didn’t say anything.”
Intelligent, surprising, fast-moving, and reliant on fewer coincidence than previously wedged in to join up the plot points, Bats Fly at Dusk might just be the best Cool and Lam novel to date. And Cats Prowl at Night (1943) I remember as being even better…so, really, if you’re not reading this series, what’s your excuse? Oh, they’re vanishingly hard to come by, yes, yes, okay. But still — one of the smartest writers in the genre working at near-peak efficacy is worth the effort to track down.
~
The Cool & Lam series by Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair:
1. The Bigger They Come, a.k.a. Lam to the Slaughter (1939)
2. Turn on the Heat (1940)
3. Gold Comes in Bricks (1940)
4. Spill the Jackpot (1941)
5. Double or Quits (1941)
6. Owls Don’t Blink (1942)
7. Bats Fly at Dusk (1942)
8. Cats Prowl at Night (1943)
9. Give ‘Em the Ax, a.k.a. An Axe to Grind (1944)
10. Crows Can’t Count (1946)
11. Fools Die on Friday (1947)
12. Bedrooms Have Windows (1949)
13. Top of the Heap (1952)
14. Some Women Won’t Wait (1953)
15. Beware the Curves (1956)
16. You Can Die Laughing (1957)
17. Some Slips Don’t Show (1957)
18. The Count of Nine (1958)
19. Pass the Gravy (1959)
20. Kept Women Can’t Quit (1960)
21. Bachelors Get Lonely (1961)
22. Shills Can’t Cash Chips, a.k.a. Stop at the Red Light (1961)
23. Try Anything Once (1962)
24. Fish or Cut Bait (1963)
25. Up for Grabs (1964)
26. Cut Thin to Win (1965)
27. Widows Wear Weeds (1966)
28. Traps Need Fresh Bait (1967)
29. All Grass Isn’t Green (1970)
30. The Knife Slipped (2016)
The Invisible Event 
This is your third review in about a week to feature a really nice vintage cover. I always enjoy seeing that.
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What’s great about Fair is that you can be pretty sure the contents are as enjoyable as the cover. With, say, the Pat McGerr title I recently reviewed the cover was the best thing, but here we can enjoy both the inside and the outside!
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About half of them are available as ebooks from various publishers – this one included – so that’s an option. I managed to find a nice Pocket Book of the first one recently, so maybe I’ll get to it someday! Never seen any others in paper form.
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I have been lucky enough to find a bunch of copies at local used bookstores. Now all I have to do is read ‘em!!!
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Commence breath-holding in three, two, one…
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I’ve had to resort to online book-buying more and more in order to fill in such gaps, and have had the good fortune to stumble over a couple of excellent sellers in the usual places who do sell books in great condition at not-unreasonable prices…so until some enterprising publisher commits to a full reprint with gorgeous covers, that’s where my money is going…!
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I enjoyed your review so much that I bought it (easily available for Kindle) and have just finished it: thank you, I loved it.
One question: in the UK, a beneficiary in a will cannot be a witness to the will. Both were here, and someone vaguely mentions its being an issue, but no-one seems to be worried. (Obviously all my extensive legal knowledge comes from reading crime books) Would love to know if this point would strike an American reader, or if the setup is different there…
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This is my favourite C&L book in the series to date, though my old and faulty memory tells me that there are a couple of excellent ones in the not too distant future. Glad someone else got some fun out of it, Gardner really is untoppable when he’s in this sort of mood.
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In the US, laws governing whether a beneficiary of someone’s will can also serve as a witness to that will can vary depending on state law. Each state has its own laws regarding wills and estate planning. Clearly though your reaction seems right as this is a conflict of interest.
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Thanks Scott – very helpful. Mind you, the whole will in this case turns out to be a mess of epic proportions, so the witnesses’ role is the least of the problems!
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Today I finished “Bats Fly at Dusk”. It was my first time reading a Cool & Lam mystery and it was wonderful. The plot, the characters, the atmosphere of 1940’s Southern California, etc. were all done marvelously and the book was a page-turner with no sagging in the middle. Also, Bertha Cool’s surname might not have been chosen purposefully as an aptronym by Gardner (Fair), but she is definitely “cool” to me in first impression.
Bonus was that it was the Dell mapback version with a fun introduction at the start and a list of interesting books from which to track down a couple at the end. I look forward to more Cool & Lam as I have “Owls Don’t Blink” and “Cats Prowl at Night” on the big pile (those are mapbacks as well; I have a weakness bordering on addiction for collecting Dell mapbacks).
Thanks again for your review as it steered me to a great read and cleansed the palate after the meh book I finished before it.
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Great to hear you had such a good time with it, Scott. It’s pretty hard to dislike, I feel, and Gardner on good form is largely unbeatable.
Your comment had the effect of driving me into the arms of ESG, since the start of 2024 has seen me really struggle to settle into any sort of reading rhythm. So I’ve read the next Cool and Lam, Cats Prowl at Night (1943), and a review should follow shortly…
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Just made it to this one on the Cool and Lam read-through and I absolutely loved it! (Actually, realizing I read it almost two years to the day from when you posted the review- fun!) I think one cool thing for me is that it almost felt like a sort of meta structure was at work- as a reader who got used to attempting to follow the twistiness of Lam’s mind, following the much more straightforward Bertha here and all the assumptions she made almost gave me a feeling of trying to BE Lam here in his absence, which was super fun as I both discovered I was right about some things and realized which others I missed because Lam, of course, out-Lamed me. Just an absolute pleasure and if the next one is better then I can’t wait. I’m also enjoying my Doug Selby read-through (recently read The DA Goes to Trial, which was also very good even if Inez is thus far deeply irritating) but Cool and Lam have my heart.
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Yeah, I think this is one of the very best of the series, the whole blind man element of the plot really worked in superbly well.
I agree, too, that seeing things from a different perspective really helps. I almost wish Fair had taken a more sort of John Dickson Carr approach and had Lam as a character always seen through someone else’s eyes, but I can understand why he didn’t do that.
And great to hear you’re enjoying Doug Selby, too. Yes, Inez is a little vexing, but that series as a whole is a delight.
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