I first encountered Erle Stanley Gardner, writing as A. A. Fair, while a young boy growing up in the wilderness of northwestern Montana. My father was a big fan of Gardner’s Perry Mason series, but occasionally he brought home one of the Fair books, and eventually he would pass it along to me if he deemed the subject matter appropriate for a lad of my tender years. Of course the ones I most looked forward to were the ones that he did not pass along and that I had to read on the sly. I can’t remember into which category Top of The Heap might have fallen. There is a stripper in the book, along with a couple of other women of questionable virtue, and so I’m betting that this is one that Dad didn’t recommend.The A. A. Fair series featured a team of detectives, Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Lam was the brainy, pint-sized detective who did all of the work, while the bejeweled, avaricious, and considerably overweight Bertha, who had founded the agency, mainly sat behind the desk and gave her partner grief. Donald had a gift when it came to the fairer sex, and women usually fell for him fast and hard. As a small boy myself, I found it very encouraging to think that a guy who was only about five-six and 135 pounds could still do so well with the ladies. Occasionally, though, Donald would encounter a “dame” who, for some inexplicable reason, was immune to his charms and needed to have the living bejesus scared out of her. At that point, he would call in the reinforcements, and Bertha would bestir herself and swing into action. Before long, the woman in question would be reduced to a sniveling mass of quivering flesh, willing and anxious to provide any information or assistance that the firm of Cool and Lam might require.As I recall, these books usually followed a predictable pattern. A new client would appear in the office with a job for the agency. The client always had a story of some sort and usually offered a large bonus for quick results. Bertha, who handled the money and the administrative details, would grow wide-eyed at the apparent simplicity of the assignment and at the size of the potential bonus. She would then call Donald in and give him instructions. Donald, of course, would immediately recognize that the client was not on the level and that something much deeper was going on. Bertha would instruct him to ignore his doubts and do the job as quickly as possible so that the agency could collect the bonus. Donald would generally agree, but then once out of the office would follow his own intuition. Inevitably, of course, the client was always lying; there was always something deeper and very sinister going on, and again, inevitably, someone would get murdered. Determined to ferret out the truth, Donald would always be up to his neck in trouble with the police and with a furious Bertha who was breathing down his neck, often threatening to dissolve the partnership and kick Donald out. But then in the nick of time, Donald would solve the case, often generating a bigger fee than Bertha had ever imagined, and in the end everyone was happy again until the next client walked into the office."Top of the Heap" falls into the middle of the series and follows the usual pattern. By now Donald has become a partner in the agency when a wealthy client appears. The client wants the firm to identify and find a couple of women the client met casually a few nights earlier so that they confirm that they were with him on the evening in question. Their evidence will provide the client with an alibi in a relatively minor matter and of course the client offers the usual large bonus for quick results.Although Donald advises against it, Bertha eagerly agrees to take the case. Donald quickly discovers that the client is a fraud and that he desperately needs an alibi for something much larger than the minor matter he alleges. The book takes off from there and involves gangsters, crooked gamblers, lonely women, wealthy bankers, suspicious miners and two or three murders in a plot that’s almost too convoluted to follow, let alone describe.Suffice it to say that the fun in these books always lay in watching Donald Lam work, rather than in the plots themselves. As in the Perry Mason series, Gardner here too often wove together impossible and totally implausible plots and then had either Mason or Lam sort things out in the last few pages in a way that left the reader shaking his head trying to follow it all."Top of the Heap" was an early entry in the Hard Case Crime series, and I would certainly argue that Donald Lam and Bertha Cool deserved at least one spot in the series, if not two or three. But I’m not sure why the editor chose this particular book. It’s not bad but, if I’m remembering correctly, there were others in the series that were better. In particular, much of this book takes place in San Francisco, rather than in Los Angeles where the agency and virtually all of the other books were located. Lam is largely on his own in this book without the usual cast of characters that appears in most of the others, and Bertha Cool’s role is much smaller here than in most of the other books in the series.The A. A. Fair books have been out of print for years and are virtually impossible to find anymore (unless, of course, you inherited your father’s collection), and "Top of the Heap" may be the only entry that is readily available. Fans of crime fiction, particularly those who enjoy pulp fiction would probably enjoy reading this book as an example of a series that was once enormously popular, even though it is now hopelessly dated.
Come for the complex, enigma-laden, riddle-wrapped mystery, and stay for the juicy, pulp-filled patois of a couple of very slick talking dicks in this hard-boiled classic. Story, characters, tone, dialogue…whichever way you prefer your noir to swing, this third entry in the Hard Case Crime series is packing enough to satisfy. Donald Lam and Bertha Cool are two people with really cool names. They’re also partners in an LA private investigation firm called Cool and Lam. Bertha generally sits behind her desk being angry while Donald goes out and does the leg work for the pair. The son of a wealthy San Francisco banker hires the pair to locate two women he was with the night a ruthless wise-guy’s squeeze got iced. Junior wants these women to alibi him if and when he gets implicated in the murder since he was the last one seen with the recently expired. Junior is a giant tool. Donald quickly finds the girls and seemingly wraps the matter up, entitling Cool and Lam to a big, fat bonus of $500 (this is 1950’s when that meant something). Of course, things are never that easy and Donald quickly finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy that would give Oliver Stone a priapism. The complexity of this thing is really a work of art has more layers than an everlasting gobstopper. You’ve got strippers and sleeping pills, boats and bodies, wise-guys and turf wars, life insurance and last wills, bank loans and bankruptcies, gold mines and gambling outfits, stock schemes and sales calls and murders and mistresses aplenty. Sound good?Oh, and if you are in need of an injection of that slick, hard-boiled jargon, you will be riding the dragon throughout: He said it with the air of a man who always demands the best, and then settles for what he can get.…‘You talk big as hell for a little guy.’‘That makes for a fair average.’ …‘Now listen, Lam,’ he said, ‘you’re a nice egg but you’ve got yourself poured into the wrong pan.’ That last one belongs in the Hall of Fame of Coolness. Overall, this was a good, solid read and the central mystery was wonderfully convoluted and clever. I didn’t like Donald and Bertha as much as the main characters in the first two installments which is why it’s being dinged a star on its total. Still, certainly worth reading and one that has me happily moving onto the next book in the series. 3.0 to 3.5 Stars. Recommended.
What do You think about Top Of The Heap (2004)?
A private dick is set on a case that seems too easy. He does a little digging, finds that it is, and decides to make his life a little more complicated.This one is strictly in the Chandler tradition, without the great use of language that the master displays. Gardner weaves a good plot, but the dick is perhaps just a tad too clever and does perhaps a little too well following the clues that are laid out like breadcrumbs for him to trace.There is also a strong undercurrent of something going on with Gardner and women. While there are a lot of women in this book, they are either beautiful gold-diggers with questionable pasts who swoon at the first sight of the dick, or else larger, older women with ball-busting attitudes who could care less about him.All in all, a pleasant enough read for a plane trip.Rated PG for some moderate themes. 3/5
—Nathan
Donald Lam...the real working half of Cool & Lam Detective Agency.When Bertha Cool takes on a well heeled client in need of establishing an alibi, she sees dollar signs. For Donald Lam it is just another job, until he finds out the the client's story doesn't make sense. The beautiful girlfriend of a notorious gangster vanishes, a mining scam, an illegal casino, a double homicide...how do these all tie together and relate to the client?Starting in L.A. and winding up in San Franciso, Lam is on the move as he finds one thing leads to another. There are a lot of twists and turns in this and you need to pay attention.Erle Stanley Gardner writes under the pen name A.A. Fair for this 29 book series written between 1939 to 1970. Bertha Cool runs the agency with an iron fist...money is the one thing that can soften her up. Donald Lam is the guy who really gets things done, in the style of noir of the 1930s. All the books have this feel and seem to take place in this time.For me, it was a Goodread.
—Chazzi
A book in the B. Cool and D. Lam noir detective series by the author that created the Perry Mason books. This one is set in San Francisco and LA so it has perhaps particular appeal to the resident of either of those cities, especially the former - it's got addresses and intersections to entertain the mind's eye of the local.The scion of a wealthy family is caught up in a dark knot which is much more snarled than the girl trouble it seems to be initially. Detective Donald Lam certainly is Cool and that's what I look for in a noir. That and good-looking girls, which this novel offers up; though not of the femme fatale variety. I admit the gambling and mining terminology necessitated by the plot lost me a little, but not enough that I wouldn't read this one again with alacrity. I'd quote the ending here, but it would count as a spoiler. This is definitely one of the better books of this genre (that isn't on the Chandler, Hammett or Cain plane).
—Masha
