Re Lam/Cool, I would love to find some of the Cool/Lam books
and read them again. Like you, I definitely favored them over
Perry Mason -- like the difference between coffee and
espresso. Most of the series, as I recall, was almost
satirical because Lam simply didn't fit the physical
stereotype of the tough PI, but most of the hard-boiled
elements were there. Now, to introduce myself: I'm a
46-year-old Hoosier, a teenage wannabe novelist turned
small-town newspaper reporter and editor turned wire-service
reporter, who got hooked on mystery at age...8 or 9, maybe,
when I stumbled across a copy of the Compleat Sherlock Holmes
and read the first two novelettes without coming up for air.
I was determined to be a science fiction or detective writer
in my burning youth, but life intervened. However, I think
I'm getting the old itch again and I certainly am a much
better writer now than I was then, so we'll see what happens.
C.J. Wilson
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, William Denton
<buff@p...> wrote:
> I read TOP OF THE HEAP by Erle Stanley Gardner
(1952, as A.A. Fair) and it
> was fine stuff! This is the first Gardner book I can
be sure I've
> finished--I think I started some Perry Masons when I
was a lad, but I
> don't remember getting to the end. After this,
however, and the
> recommendations I've seen for the Bertha Cool/Donald
Lam books (such as
> this) and the Perry Masons, I'll try more. I think
people have said that
> Perry's sort of hardboiled in the early
books.
>
> Does Bertha Cool play more of a role in the other
books than in this one?
> Here she's around at the start and the finish, but
mostly it's Lam on his
> own.
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