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Cool and Lam #24
Fish or Cut Bait
220 pp.
159 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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103 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 14, 2018
The twenty-fifth entry in A. A. Fair's (Erle Stanley Gardner's) series featuring private detectives Donald Lam and Bertha Cool finds Donald up to his neck in trouble, as usual, and Bertha in an uproar, also as usual.
The story opens when a businessman asks the detectives to prove twenty-four-hour protection to his secretary who has been getting threatening letters and unsettling phone calls. He wants a man to be on duty during the days and a woman to be on duty at nights, and Cool and Lam seem like the perfect answer to his problem.
Donald and Bertha accept the assignment and almost immediately, of course, things go sideways. Donald is curious about the setup from the beginning, and the closer he looks, the more suspicious he becomes. Ultimately, the case will involve a murder or two along with some conniving businessmen, a few sexy female "escorts" and a fairly clever madam. Practically everyone in the cast of characters is lying through his or her teeth; Donald's nemesis, Sergeant Frank Sellers, will be hard on Donald's case again, and all in all, it makes for a fun evening's read.
The story opens when a businessman asks the detectives to prove twenty-four-hour protection to his secretary who has been getting threatening letters and unsettling phone calls. He wants a man to be on duty during the days and a woman to be on duty at nights, and Cool and Lam seem like the perfect answer to his problem.
Donald and Bertha accept the assignment and almost immediately, of course, things go sideways. Donald is curious about the setup from the beginning, and the closer he looks, the more suspicious he becomes. Ultimately, the case will involve a murder or two along with some conniving businessmen, a few sexy female "escorts" and a fairly clever madam. Practically everyone in the cast of characters is lying through his or her teeth; Donald's nemesis, Sergeant Frank Sellers, will be hard on Donald's case again, and all in all, it makes for a fun evening's read.
June 15, 2024
My thanks to GR buddy James Thane for pointing me toward my first A.A. Fair read.
Bertha Cool and Donald Lam run a small detective agency in Los Angeles. The time is The Sixties and they make a somewhat odd couple.
“The story opens when a businessman asks the detectives to prove twenty-four-hour protection to his secretary who has been getting threatening letters and unsettling phone calls. He wants a man to be on duty during the days and a woman to be on duty at nights, and Cool and Lam seem like the perfect answer to his problem.”
Both Cool and Lam are immediately on alert because this isn’t their first client and his manner and story raise some questions that he isn’t interested in answering.
Things do not go as advertised and it isn’t too much later when Lam is confronted by the following: “He extended his index finger and pushed it into my chest, with little jabbing motions emphasizing his word. ‘I told you to forget it. I told you not to tell anybody about this. I told you not to get mixed up in that automobile accident. In other words, I’m telling you to keep your nose clean on this, or you’ll get hurt so bad you will never get over it.’”
Does Lam take the warning seriously….well “yes” and “no.” He understands his vulnerability but he may already be in too deep. “Donald, you keep fooling around with this thing and you’ll be in danger.”
“I know it,” I told her. “And if I don’t keep fooling around with it, I’ll be in danger. Once some radio reporter starts putting the heat on the police department, the police are going to look for a fall guy.”
A fast-moving, thoughtful detective story by the great Erle Stanley Gardner. And, that fact makes me want to do some comparisons. The relationship between Perry Mason and Della Street is, on its face, one of employer and employee. The relationship between Bertha Cool and Donald Lam is partners in a business. Both "teams" work in L.A. during the same period but there isn't any intersection between them so far. Bertha is the practical, everything is either black or white, partner making sure that they get paid properly for their work. Donald is the one who, above all, wants justice to be done. He is willing to work on something, not knowing if he will get paid, if he feels someone is trying to “game” the outcome. The approach was interesting and I might pick up another one in the future.
3.5
Bertha Cool and Donald Lam run a small detective agency in Los Angeles. The time is The Sixties and they make a somewhat odd couple.
“The story opens when a businessman asks the detectives to prove twenty-four-hour protection to his secretary who has been getting threatening letters and unsettling phone calls. He wants a man to be on duty during the days and a woman to be on duty at nights, and Cool and Lam seem like the perfect answer to his problem.”
Both Cool and Lam are immediately on alert because this isn’t their first client and his manner and story raise some questions that he isn’t interested in answering.
Things do not go as advertised and it isn’t too much later when Lam is confronted by the following: “He extended his index finger and pushed it into my chest, with little jabbing motions emphasizing his word. ‘I told you to forget it. I told you not to tell anybody about this. I told you not to get mixed up in that automobile accident. In other words, I’m telling you to keep your nose clean on this, or you’ll get hurt so bad you will never get over it.’”
Does Lam take the warning seriously….well “yes” and “no.” He understands his vulnerability but he may already be in too deep. “Donald, you keep fooling around with this thing and you’ll be in danger.”
“I know it,” I told her. “And if I don’t keep fooling around with it, I’ll be in danger. Once some radio reporter starts putting the heat on the police department, the police are going to look for a fall guy.”
A fast-moving, thoughtful detective story by the great Erle Stanley Gardner. And, that fact makes me want to do some comparisons. The relationship between Perry Mason and Della Street is, on its face, one of employer and employee. The relationship between Bertha Cool and Donald Lam is partners in a business. Both "teams" work in L.A. during the same period but there isn't any intersection between them so far. Bertha is the practical, everything is either black or white, partner making sure that they get paid properly for their work. Donald is the one who, above all, wants justice to be done. He is willing to work on something, not knowing if he will get paid, if he feels someone is trying to “game” the outcome. The approach was interesting and I might pick up another one in the future.
3.5
November 24, 2024
Gardner, best known as the creator of trial lawyer Perry Mason, also published thirty books (when you count Hard Case crime’s posthumously published The Knife Slipped) in the offbeat Cool and Lam private eye series. The key to this series is a pair of mismatched detectives working out of a Los Angeles office.
Donald Lam is not who you would think of as a detective. He is pint-size, not too muscled, but possesses a Brain unparalleled in its cleverness. When asked by a client, what he’s doing, he explains: “I’m playing a game,” I told her. “The object of that game is to find out who’s pushing you around and put the shoe on the other foot and start pushing them.” “And why?’ I said, “I hate to be outwitted. I hate to have somebody pull a fast one on me.”
Bertha Cool, on the other hand, is: “one hundred and sixty-five pounds of belligerence, somewhere around sixty, with a form like a roll of barbed wire, looked up from the creaky swivel chair with eyes that were as hard as the diamonds on her hands.” Bertha is ornery and wants to get right to the bottom line of what she can suck out of a client’s wallet. With people, she has what generally amounts to the opposite of charm and grace. When asked to describe Bertha to a potential client, Donald replies, “Words can only do so much. You have to know Bertha to appreciate her. Shall I arrange an interview?”
This novel opens with Donald’s executive secretary Elsie Brand ushering into his office Mr. Jarvis C. Archer of Molybdenum Steel Research Importing Company. Archer explains his secretary, Marilyn Chelan, has been getting threatening letters and phone calls and he wants two detectives to guard her, a male detective by day and a female detective by night. Donald quickly comes to the conclusion that this is all a bunch of hooey and nobody can possibly be who they are pretending to be.
Eventually, Donald figures out that Marilyn has some connection with Jeanette Latty, a murdered woman who ran an escort service. I went out on a few dates, Marilyn explains.
While Donald carefully tries to draw the facts from Marilyn, Bertha blunders about, involving Sergeant Frank Sellers and the thought that she was set up and drugged to boot to give Marilyn an alibi for the murder.
You may need to wait until the end to gear Bertha bellow out her trademarked “Fry me for an oyster.” You may need also to wait till the end for Donald to finally put all the disparate clues together and uncover the schemes which led to murder.
Donald Lam is not who you would think of as a detective. He is pint-size, not too muscled, but possesses a Brain unparalleled in its cleverness. When asked by a client, what he’s doing, he explains: “I’m playing a game,” I told her. “The object of that game is to find out who’s pushing you around and put the shoe on the other foot and start pushing them.” “And why?’ I said, “I hate to be outwitted. I hate to have somebody pull a fast one on me.”
Bertha Cool, on the other hand, is: “one hundred and sixty-five pounds of belligerence, somewhere around sixty, with a form like a roll of barbed wire, looked up from the creaky swivel chair with eyes that were as hard as the diamonds on her hands.” Bertha is ornery and wants to get right to the bottom line of what she can suck out of a client’s wallet. With people, she has what generally amounts to the opposite of charm and grace. When asked to describe Bertha to a potential client, Donald replies, “Words can only do so much. You have to know Bertha to appreciate her. Shall I arrange an interview?”
This novel opens with Donald’s executive secretary Elsie Brand ushering into his office Mr. Jarvis C. Archer of Molybdenum Steel Research Importing Company. Archer explains his secretary, Marilyn Chelan, has been getting threatening letters and phone calls and he wants two detectives to guard her, a male detective by day and a female detective by night. Donald quickly comes to the conclusion that this is all a bunch of hooey and nobody can possibly be who they are pretending to be.
Eventually, Donald figures out that Marilyn has some connection with Jeanette Latty, a murdered woman who ran an escort service. I went out on a few dates, Marilyn explains.
While Donald carefully tries to draw the facts from Marilyn, Bertha blunders about, involving Sergeant Frank Sellers and the thought that she was set up and drugged to boot to give Marilyn an alibi for the murder.
You may need to wait until the end to gear Bertha bellow out her trademarked “Fry me for an oyster.” You may need also to wait till the end for Donald to finally put all the disparate clues together and uncover the schemes which led to murder.
August 17, 2014
This quick pulp fiction might qualify as a train-journey read with a shallow mystery that just keeps developing. A mystery hooks you only as long as you believe you have all the facts and characters. This book introduces new characters, new story lines and developments till upto 80% of the book.
I still can't digest the goodreads summary of the book that should almost be categorized as a spoiler!
I still can't digest the goodreads summary of the book that should almost be categorized as a spoiler!
May 7, 2024
Six novels from the end, Gardner has settled in to a well worn formula. Client comes to Cool & Lam to work for them. It's almost never as straightforward as it seems. Donald probably gets involved with a woman or two. Someone gets murdered. Frank Sellers threatens Donald even though he should know by now not to. Donald comes up with the solution. Rinse and repeat. The thing is that they're so well written and engaging that you just don't mind. I did have some hope that after the last time that the "will they won't they" between Donald and his secretary Elsie would go somewhere...but alas...no. And at this point Frank Sellers is just a caricature of the gruff police detective. There was a time he was on the verge of becoming a real character, but Gardner has really regressed with him.
Still, I breezed through this in a couple of evenings and enjoyed almost every minute of it. And that's what matters sometimes.
Still, I breezed through this in a couple of evenings and enjoyed almost every minute of it. And that's what matters sometimes.
May 8, 2021
Love when they get rough!
October 27, 2015
I've never been able to figure out why this book is called "Fish or Cut Bait." Even the meaning of the idiom is elusive. Is it, "We're sharing the work, so decide which part you're going to do, and do it"? Or is it, "If you're not really going to do this, stop wasting your time trying"? The general understanding of the phrase has shifted toward the latter over the course of the couple of centuries it's been in use, basically because for most people fishing has shifted from being a livelihood toward being a pastime.
Having just read this book, I can tell you that neither meaning seems to apply to any of the situations in the story. The title does not appear anywhere in the text. I remain perplexed.
Meanwhile, this is not among the best of the Donald Lam escapades. It begins, in typical fashion, with a client who comes to the detective agency with a story full of holes. Lam and Cool are hired as bodyguards for a woman being pestered by anonymous phone calls. Lam sees right through it and immediately takes his own line. A scramble, as usual, ensues, but it's not a very convincing one.
P. S. - I can't remember ever re-reading a novel immediately, but I decided to try it with this one because I finished the book still not understanding who had been responsible for the anonymous phone calls or why they were being made. And in fact I finished it a second time STILL not understanding who had been responsible for the anonymous phone calls or why they were being made.
Having just read this book, I can tell you that neither meaning seems to apply to any of the situations in the story. The title does not appear anywhere in the text. I remain perplexed.
Meanwhile, this is not among the best of the Donald Lam escapades. It begins, in typical fashion, with a client who comes to the detective agency with a story full of holes. Lam and Cool are hired as bodyguards for a woman being pestered by anonymous phone calls. Lam sees right through it and immediately takes his own line. A scramble, as usual, ensues, but it's not a very convincing one.
P. S. - I can't remember ever re-reading a novel immediately, but I decided to try it with this one because I finished the book still not understanding who had been responsible for the anonymous phone calls or why they were being made. And in fact I finished it a second time STILL not understanding who had been responsible for the anonymous phone calls or why they were being made.
September 13, 2010
A.A. Fair was one of Erle Stanley Gardner's pseudonyms. He wrote about Perry Mason under his real name and about a whole slew of other detectives/lawyers under other names.
A.A. Fair was the creator of the Lam & Cool detective agency, province of Donald Lam (the regular detective guy) and wonderful, psycho, hostile, Bossy Boots Bertha Cool (the other detective). Lam & Cool don't even like each other, but for some reason their agency manages to stay alive as long as both of them are working, so work they do.
A.A. Fair had easily even more convoluted an imagination than Erle Stanley Gardner, so when someone needs a woman detective to spend the night in the apartment of a woman who needs body-guarding, there's no question this is going to turn out to be a faked alibi. But an alibi for what?
Gardner kind of liked the gimmick of women who knew each other in San Francisco following each other to his detectives' town and committing crimes against each other there. God only knows why. The solution to this one's a little bit of an eye-brow raiser, and he uses Bertha's female right to beat up another female (nice boys don't hit girls) pretty amorally. But still. It's Gardner.
I don't even care that it has nothing to do with fishing.
A.A. Fair was the creator of the Lam & Cool detective agency, province of Donald Lam (the regular detective guy) and wonderful, psycho, hostile, Bossy Boots Bertha Cool (the other detective). Lam & Cool don't even like each other, but for some reason their agency manages to stay alive as long as both of them are working, so work they do.
A.A. Fair had easily even more convoluted an imagination than Erle Stanley Gardner, so when someone needs a woman detective to spend the night in the apartment of a woman who needs body-guarding, there's no question this is going to turn out to be a faked alibi. But an alibi for what?
Gardner kind of liked the gimmick of women who knew each other in San Francisco following each other to his detectives' town and committing crimes against each other there. God only knows why. The solution to this one's a little bit of an eye-brow raiser, and he uses Bertha's female right to beat up another female (nice boys don't hit girls) pretty amorally. But still. It's Gardner.
I don't even care that it has nothing to do with fishing.
May 11, 2017
Back to basics for AAF/ESG on this one. Blackmail, cover-ups & less abuse from Sgt. Sellers than in the previous few novels. I liked this one MUCH more than a couple of the ones that I recently read in the series. Only five or sex left to go now.
June 5, 2023
Another mystery featuring P.I.s Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, much better than the last one I read where Donald was off fighting in WW II.
Cool and Lam are hired by a businessman to play 24-hour bodyguards to his secretary who is getting threatening phone calls (just heavy breathing) and letters. The boss claims their relationship is innocent, but who does that for a secretary? The whole set-up stinks to Donald, while Bertha (as usual) puts up with it for the dollars. During the first night on watch Bertha gets drugged and the next morning Cool and Lam get fired. Donald doesn't like being used as a patsy and continues to dig on his own, getting mixed up in a murder or two and crossing swords with the police intent on busting a house of ill repute.
The verdict? Same as from some of my previous reviews, which still holds true: These plots are always a little too convoluted, and Donald is always a little too smart for his own good. And yes, Bertha is annoying and somewhat one-dimensional. But I still enjoy these for the glimpse into an earlier time, the writing, and the dialogue. Fun even if somewhat repetitive and forgettable.
Cool and Lam are hired by a businessman to play 24-hour bodyguards to his secretary who is getting threatening phone calls (just heavy breathing) and letters. The boss claims their relationship is innocent, but who does that for a secretary? The whole set-up stinks to Donald, while Bertha (as usual) puts up with it for the dollars. During the first night on watch Bertha gets drugged and the next morning Cool and Lam get fired. Donald doesn't like being used as a patsy and continues to dig on his own, getting mixed up in a murder or two and crossing swords with the police intent on busting a house of ill repute.
The verdict? Same as from some of my previous reviews, which still holds true: These plots are always a little too convoluted, and Donald is always a little too smart for his own good. And yes, Bertha is annoying and somewhat one-dimensional. But I still enjoy these for the glimpse into an earlier time, the writing, and the dialogue. Fun even if somewhat repetitive and forgettable.
August 4, 2025
I absolutely love this series. In my opinion, the stories are so much better than the Perry Mason series. This story holds up as well. The story is entertaining and is full of plot twists. If you have not read any of these stories, you are missing alot.
September 16, 2020
Donald Lam ends up working on his own after his client ends the assignment. And of course, there are several girls and a murder.
January 31, 2011
There is something compelling about this series. it is unconventional set up. An alternate universe to his Perry Mason series.
May 21, 2011
Not a bad Cool and Lam, but not the best either. Very linear plot line and not many side trips as there are in some of the better books.
August 1, 2016
Excellent detective story. I really enjoyed it.
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