Look, I can’t swear to it, but I have a suspicion that Cats Prowl at Night (1943), the eighth published book in Erle Stanley Gardner’s series featuring Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, written under this A.A. Fair nom de plume, just might be the first title of his I ever read. Reading it now, some 20 years later, it tickled enough memory buttons to be tauntingly familiar while also furiously out of reach, but the distinct aspect that separates this book from its brethren — namely the absence of pocket dynamo Donald Lam from its pages — feels familiar, if only because I get the sense I started these books with no sense of Lam as a character.
Erle Stanley Gardner
#1132: The Case of the Smoking Chimney (1943) by Erle Stanley Gardner
While you’ve hopefully been enjoying the regular reviews on The Invisible Event, I’ve been sweating bullets over the fact that I hit a seeming unpassable patch of reader’s block and haven’t read anything for nearly a month. Then Brad suggested that some Erle Stanley Gardner might help me out as it has done recently for him and, well, here we are. Mistakenly believing The Case of the Smoking Chimney (1943) to be the first of Gardner’s two novels featuring the disreputable Gramps Wiggins I picked it up and spent a very happy day in its pages, and while it reaffirmed much of what I like about Gardner’s writing the book also bears many of the man’s flaws.
#1124: Bats Fly at Dusk (1942) by A.A. Fair
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…
#1108: Little Fictions – The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith: ‘The Hand is Quicker than the Eye’, a.k.a. ‘Lester Leith, Magician’ (1939) by Erle Stanley Gardner
A big game hunter, an explorer, and a master sharpshooter attend a magic show while on a cruise…not the setup of a disappointing joke, but rather the core idea at the centre of ‘The Hand is Quicker than the Eye’, a.k.a. ‘Lester Leith, Magician’ (1939), the fifth and final story collected in The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith (1980).
Continue reading#1105: Little Fictions – The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith: ‘The Exact Opposite’ (1941) by Erle Stanley Gardner
Another tale of professional thief Lester Leith (hey, that rhymes…!), and another impossible crime. Who knew that Erle Stanley Gardner dabbled in the best subgenre in the world so frequently?
Continue reading#1102: Little Fictions – The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith: ‘A Thousand to One’ (1939) by Erle Stanley Gardner
I’m very much enjoying the company of Lester Leith, Erle Stanley Gardner’s gentleman scoundrel who, having extracted from criminals their ill-gotten gains, takes a small cut and passes the balance onto worthy causes.
Continue reading#1099: Little Fictions – The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith: ‘The Bird in the Hand’ (1932) by Erle Stanley Gardner
Send a thief to catch a thief, eh? And then try to catch that second thief and frame him for the theft done by the original thief? Sir, you’re not playing very fairly with Lester Leith.
Continue reading#1096: Little Fictions – The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith: ‘In Round Figures’ (1930) by Erle Stanley Gardner
Five Tuesdays in August, five stories about gentleman scoundrel Lester Leith from the pen of Erle Stanley Gardner — synergy.
Continue reading#1071: “Now there’s been a murder, the situation will be different.” – The Case of the Lame Canary (1937) by Erle Stanley Gardner
I might have read as many as half of Erle Stanley Gardner’s 80-some Perry Mason books — it’s difficult to remember, I didn’t used to keep track — and am fond of stating the opinion that eleventh title The Case of the Lame Canary (1937) is perhaps the peak of those I have encountered to date. So let’s revisit it, eh, and see how my memory stands up.
Continue reading#1055: Owls Don’t Blink (1942) by A.A. Fair
If I remember correctly — and, let’s face it, I probably don’t, since I read them years ago and all out of order — Owls Don’t Blink (1942), the sixth title to feature Erle Stanley Gardner’s irrepressible P.I. duo of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, starts something of a hot streak for the series. Hired by New York lawyer Emory Hale on behalf of an unknown client to find an ex-model who was last heard of in New Orleans some three years ago, you know Gardner has something special up his sleeve when the resourceful Donald is able to produce the woman within twenty pages. From here, it’s a criss-cross of obscured motives and identities, and enough skulduggery for Yorrick’s remains.