Owls Don't Blink

The day she told her husband he could go his own way, were it blonde or brunette, she became a happy woman. Freed from the duty of preserving a contour that would keep Mr. Cool home nights, she gave up dieting, and serenely watched her figure expand to balloon-like proportions.

Inside, she was hard as nails, shrewd and unscrupulous, stingy, avaricious. She handled cases no decent agency would touch. She hired Donald Lam for two reasons he hod brains, and she knew he needed a job so badly that she could get him for practically nothing. She watched his expense account like a vulture and did her best to deduct legitimate expenses from his already meager salary.

But deep inside that mountain of flesh must have been a heart, for in spite of these instincts she developed an affectionate, almost solicitous, loyalty for Donald.

You’ll like Bertha Cool. She is lusty and gusty and has personality.

Every runt gets pushed around Donald Lam was no exception. The difference between him and most runts was that the harder you pushed the faster Donald came back. He discovered early in life that his hands weren’t much use to him in a fight, so he used his head. And there was nothing soft about Donald’s head. He used his mind and trained it mercilessly. Sometimes it got him into trouble because he was just a little too far ahead of the other fellow.

Nor was Donald too ethical. He’d learned that if nature had made you pint size, it was easier to trip a man up than knock him down. Some people called Donald “poison.”

There was only one thing about him that worried Bertha Cool. She thought he was too susceptible to women. Maybe he was. There was no doubt that women made fools of themselves over Donald. Bertha didn’t understand why but she didn’t mind. Donald’s girlfriends were pretty useful.

This was one case when Bertha Cool didn’t see much of her partner, Donald Lam. This time he was living with the clients instead of running up expensive hotel bills. Still, it made it even harder for Bertha to keep tabs on him.

But she had to admit that Henry C. Ashbury was a pretty smart cookie, and it was his idea to take Donald on as a gym coach so the little smoothie could gain his daughter’s confidence. Someone was blackmailing Alta Ashbury — and her father didn’t trust any of the household, least of all his second wife.

Bertha Cool was in a flap. The distinguished Mr Homer Breckinridge had been waiting twenty minutes for Donald Lam to make an appearance, and around Mr Breckinridge was the heady aroma of C-A-S-H. Then Donald appeared and in no time found himself hired to investigate an insurance claim. “Such nice, safe, respectable work”, purred Bertha, “and it’s up for grabs.” But it didn’t take Donald long to find out he was anything but safe and that he was the one up for grabs...

Have you ever met one of those one-armed bandits standing innocently against a wall — waiting for you to play his game? There are thousands of them throughout the country — slot machines.

The notorious slot-machine rocket furnishes the background for A. A. Fair’s new murder mystery — featuring Bertha Cool and Donald Lam in as exciting and original a detective story as you’re read since GOLD COMES IN BRICKS.

The setting is Las Vegas, Nevada, and later, Reno.

A bod siege of flu and pneumonia has just forced Bertha Cool to slough off same hundred pounds of excess weight, and until she catches distinguished — looking Arthur Whitewell appreciatively eyeing her sleek, svelte figure, she’s not in the best of humors. To Donald Lam’s amazement, however, Berth presently begins to purr, and persist with her diet.

It was Corla Burke they were looking for — the lovely Corla who disappeared so mysteriously just before she was to marry Whitewell’s son, Philip, and no one knew “why” or “how” or “where.”

It didn’t look to Donald Lam as through it were going to be a particularly tough or exciting assignment. That was before he really got started, for from the moment he spotted level-eyed, smartly dressed Helen Framley coolly milking a slot machine in the big room of the “Cactus” he had pull up his belt and get on his toes.

First there was Everett Belder. He seemed to have a round-trip ticket from the frying pan to the fire.

Bertha Cool had no sooner agreed to help him than she found herself traveling the same route.

And everywhere she looked there were women—

A jealous wife with a tell-tale cat...

A corpse that have been killed twice...

A mother-in-law in the worst tradition...

An adopted daughter with more brains than past...

An hysterical secretary with more past than brains...

A maid with strange qualification...

And money, money everywhere, not any spot of cash.

But worst of all — no Donald! Bertha’s reconciled now to his being in the Navy; she’s proud of the fact that he’s a hero; but when it comes to pulling her own chestnuts out of the fire, well—

Money in the bank had always been a persuasive factor in Bertha Cool’s life — and Lamont Hawley represented a lot of it. He also represented an insurance company that smelled a rat about a traffic-accident claim. The trouble was the claimant had drifted away — a beautiful blonde who had been co-operative and level-headed. In fact, too level-headed... she sounded almost professional. Donald Lam didn’t like it. Why should a large insurance company need an outside investigator? But Bertha’s eyes see $$$ so Donald gets cracking, and within no time he is the prime suspect. For what on earth is a body doing in the trunk of Donald’s car?

Unfettered, unfiltered, unorthodox Bertha Cool and Donald Lam have four of the least likely and most popular private eyes in the business — and they’ve never been in sharper focus!

It’s always exciting when Erle Stanley Gardner assumes his favorite pseudonym of A. A. Fair and lets her rip! This new mystery novel is exhibit A proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Bertha Cool and Donald Lam are among the most ingenious and inventive characters in mystery fiction.

Here is all the old sweet-and-sour, plus the catchiest plot ever dissected by the intrepid twosome. Bertha is at her toughest and funniest, and Donald is at top form knowing and debonair.

Beware the Curves

It started as a routine tail — shadowing an oily hustler who’d been courting a well-healed matron. But the assignment soon led Donald Lam to a sleazy hotel room with a sexy barfly. And now she’s left him high and dry with a pair of corpses dumped in his lap. Suddenly he’s the cops’ prime suspect. And it’ll take some fancy footwork to sidestep the law — and the real killer, who intends to leave Bertha Cool partnerless.

It all started with Milton Carling Calhoun, a wealthy young tycoon, who hired Bertha Cool and Donald Lam to find a writer named Colburn Hale.

The reason? Calhoun just wanted to talk to Hale.

The search begins in the novelist’s pad and leads to a beautiful woman named Nanncie, who in turn leads to Mexico, marijuana and murder.

As the plot thickens and twists, it forms a rope that nearly lands around Calhoun’s neck.

First there was the blind man. He “saw” a great deal for a sightless man.

Bertha Cool had no sooner digested his strange story when her life really became complicated with other things...

A girl who was hit by an automobile but who didn’t care about collecting damages...

A will that made all the relatives happy!..

A man with valuable information — and a high price on it...

Two strange deaths that didn’t seem to make sense...

$10,000 that wasn’t where it should have been...

A man who thought being a cousin was worth money...

A handsomely painted music box that was sent anonymously...

A gun with a sense of justice...

A pet bat that liked to cuddle...

A sporting preparation to the intelligent mystery fan: open this door when you want to play fair with the most original pair of detectives of years — and will keep the secret that is going to make detective-story history — the secret of

When Donald Lam and Bertha Cool cut in on a deal, they CUT THIN TO WIN. The man’s name was Clayton Dawson. The Cool-Lam Agency was so well known he’d come from Denver for help on a highly confidential matter... After adjusting to the fact that “Cool” was a woman (a “Big Bertha” as it turned out) and “Lam” looked like he couldn’t hurt a fly (an outrageous deceit), Dawson shelled out a fat retainer and put his cards on the table. The question was: Were they from a marked deck?