Erle Stanley Gardner is of course the author of the Perry Mason series of crime novels. He also wrote another series about the detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam under the pseudonym A.A. Fair. TURN ON THE HEAT was the second book in the Cool and Lam series and was originally published in 1940.
I read this one because I recently read and enjoyed one of Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries and happened to have a copy of the Hard Case Crime reprint of this Cool and Lam story. Cool and Lam are kind of an unlikely pair of detectives. Bertha Cool runs the operation and is a middle-aged overweight woman who likes to flash her diamonds and doesn't take any crap. Lam is a younger man who may be slightly underweight and shortâkind of like a Laurel and Hardy pair of PIs. In this novel, a man named Smith hires them to find a woman named Amelia Lintig who vanished 20 years earlier. Smith doesn't tell them why he wants her found but heads him in the direction of a small town, Oakview, where she lived. Well this case turns very convolutedâSmith is not who he seems, the woman he is after is his ex-wife, and others are also looking for her. The case is all related to another town where Smith is seeking election as mayor to try to clean up the town and get rid of the corrupt people in power. So why does he need to find his ex-wife? A murder happens along the way which Lam also must try to solve since the prime suspect is Smith.
I didn't enjoy this as much as the Perry Mason stories but it did hold my interest. It's not a straight-forward murder mystery but is more of a complicated tale about broken marriages, political corruption, nightclubs, and crooked cops and politicians. I mildly enjoyed this but not sure when or if I will be reading more of these.
I read this one because I recently read and enjoyed one of Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries and happened to have a copy of the Hard Case Crime reprint of this Cool and Lam story. Cool and Lam are kind of an unlikely pair of detectives. Bertha Cool runs the operation and is a middle-aged overweight woman who likes to flash her diamonds and doesn't take any crap. Lam is a younger man who may be slightly underweight and shortâkind of like a Laurel and Hardy pair of PIs. In this novel, a man named Smith hires them to find a woman named Amelia Lintig who vanished 20 years earlier. Smith doesn't tell them why he wants her found but heads him in the direction of a small town, Oakview, where she lived. Well this case turns very convolutedâSmith is not who he seems, the woman he is after is his ex-wife, and others are also looking for her. The case is all related to another town where Smith is seeking election as mayor to try to clean up the town and get rid of the corrupt people in power. So why does he need to find his ex-wife? A murder happens along the way which Lam also must try to solve since the prime suspect is Smith.
I didn't enjoy this as much as the Perry Mason stories but it did hold my interest. It's not a straight-forward murder mystery but is more of a complicated tale about broken marriages, political corruption, nightclubs, and crooked cops and politicians. I mildly enjoyed this but not sure when or if I will be reading more of these.
