Beware the Curves (Lam/Cool Mysteries) (Pocket Bk #6024)

by A.A. Fair and Erle Stanley Gardner

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000CROOZS
• Release Date: January 1960
• Publisher: Pocket
• Length: 183 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

In which Donald Lam upstages Perry Mason

If you like Gardner's Perry Mason books but have some qualms about exploring the Donald Lam/Bertha Cool mysteries, start with this book. Beware the Curves is the one title in which Donald gets to put his legal education to use inside a courtroom, albeit he masterminds the defense from behind the rail. If you're not familiar with the partnership of Cool & Lam, are you in for a treat! Bertha is 160 pounds of hard-as-diamonds personality; she squashes euphemisms like they were roaches. Abrasive, greedy, and overbearing, she's also intensely loyal. Her junior partner is Donald Lam, a disbarred lawyer who is always at least three steps ahead of the reader and is forever leading with his chin. With his brains, good looks and sex appeal you might think Lam is too good to be true but a reading of several of these titles will show that Donald has his flaws: He can be careless of people's feelings and he can be more than a little vindictive; he never forgets a slight and he always makes the offender pay for it, even if the offender is his partner. I enjoy the Perry Mason books but I re-read the Cool & Lam books every couple of years. Even though I know how the case will come out I enjoy the character interaction between undersized Donald Lam and the seamy characters of Los Angeles.

Not a Cold Case - a Live One

The first job was simple. Find the name of a man. He was to get the name of a man who provided the plot of a book. With just a few things to go on Donald Lam does exactly that - much to his frustration. He provides that information to his client - the name of the man, the acts surprised when his client really wanted more. Lam points out that if he was REALLY interested in the murder of the man, he made three big mistakes. The first was not telling him, so Lam could cover his back trail. The second was not telling him the man the police were interested in fit his description. The third was not leaving a phone number so Donald could warn him that the police might just be interested in a private eye who was looking up a famous murder case. Still, he was all business after that - pay him for the job. However, his partner accepts a second job - find out if it is safe for the client to come back since the death of the only man who could identify him in the murder case. It wasn't, but the man is arrested. Still, even Lam's job as a jury consultant to a law school friend of his wasn't the key to the case - it was Donald's own legal knowledge and ability to bait a trap. Maybe the real killer would never be prosecuted for it, but Donald's job was saving his client...