(SHE PLAYED THE ODDS – AND LOST!
When the beautiful girl...)
SHE PLAYED THE ODDS – AND LOST!
When the beautiful girlfriend of a notorious gangster vanishes, the last man to be seen with her needs an alibi – and fast. Enter Donald Lam of the Cool & Lam detective agency. Donald tracks down the two women with whom his client claims to have spent the night and the client declares the case closed.
But it’s not. Something about his client’s story doesn’t add up, and Donald can’t resist the temptation to keep digging. Before he knows it, he’s dug up connections to a mining scam, an illegal casino, and a double homicide – plus an opportunity for an enterprising private eye to make a small fortune, if he can just stay alive long enough to cash in on it!
The Case of the Velvet Claws (Perry Mason Series Book 1)
(Thanks to a bungled robbery at a fancy hotel, the already...)
Thanks to a bungled robbery at a fancy hotel, the already-married Eva Griffin has been caught in the company of a prominent congressman. To protect the politico, Eva's ready to pay the editor of a sleazy tabloid his hush money. But Perry Mason has other plans. He tracks down the phantom fat cat who secretly runs the blackmailing tabloid -- only to discover a shocking scoop.
By the time Mason's comely client finally comes clean, her husband has taken a bullet in the heart. Now Perry Mason has two choices: represent the cunning widow in her wrangle for the dead man's money -- or take the rap for murder.
(From the world-famous creator of "Perry Mason," Erle Stan...)
From the world-famous creator of "Perry Mason," Erle Stanley Gardner comes another baffling case for the Cool & Lam detective agency
Erle Stanley Gardner was not just the creator of PERRY MASON - at the time of his death, he was the best-selling American author of all time, with hundreds of millions of books in print, including the 29 cases of the brash, irresistible detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Gardner was also one of the most ingenious plot-spinners in the field, coming up with stunning twists and reveals... and THE COUNT OF 9 is Gardner at his twistiest.
Hired to protect the treasures of a globe-trotting adventurer, Bertha and Donald confront an impossible crime: how could anything be smuggled out of a dinner party - least of all a 6-foot-long blowgun - when the guests were X-rayed coming and going? But that's nothing compared to the crime they face next: AN IMPOSSIBLE MURDER...
(Lost for more than 75 years, The Knife Slipped was meant ...)
Lost for more than 75 years, The Knife Slipped was meant to be the second book in the series, but shelved when Gardner’s publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool’s tendency to “talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.” But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities—however shocking for 1939—shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday of private eyes and shady dames, of powerful criminals, crooked cops, blazing dialogue, and delicious plot twists.
Donald Lam has never been cooler—not even when played by Frank Sinatra on the U.S. Steel Hour of Mystery in 1946. Bertha Cool has never been tougher. And Erle Stanley Gardner has never been better.
The Case of the Rolling Bones (Perry Mason Series Book 15)
(UNLUCKY IN LOVE
Years ago Alden Leeds found a rich vein ...)
UNLUCKY IN LOVE
Years ago Alden Leeds found a rich vein of gold in the Klondike. Now his greedy relatives fear he's planning to throw his fortune away on a gold-digging spouse, Emily Milicant. So to prevent the two from joining in holy matrimony, they commit their affluent kin to a sanitarium on a trumped-up charge.
Then Leeds escapes, only to end up in the company of Emily's blackmailing brother, John, a manufacturer of fixed dice, rolling bones that always come up seven. But when John is murdered--with Leeds's fingerprints found all over the apartment--Perry Mason must crack a baffling case before his client bumps from the nut house to the jail house. . . .
(COOL AND LAM RETURN – IN THE CASE OF A LIFETIME
Erle Sta...)
COOL AND LAM RETURN – IN THE CASE OF A LIFETIME
Erle Stanley Gardner was not just the creator of PERRY MASON – at the time of his death, he was the best-selling American author of all time, with hundreds of millions of books in print. Among those books were the 29 cases of the brash, irresistible detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Last year, Hard Case Crime brought out the first new Cool and Lam novel in decades, THE KNIFE SLIPPED, lost for 77 years after Gardner’s publisher refused it. Now, we’re bringing you the book Gardner wrote to replace it, often considered the best in the series: TURN ON THE HEAT.
Hired by a mysterious “Mr. Smith” to find a woman who vanished 21 years earlier, Donald Lam finds himself facing a sadistic cop, a desperate showgirl, a duplicitous client, and one very dogged (and beautiful) newspaper reporter – while Bertha Cool’s attempts to cut herself in on this lucrative opportunity land them both hip-deep in murder…
Erle Stanley Gardner was an American lawyer and author. He is best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, but he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces and also a series of nonfiction books, mostly narrations of his travels through Baja California and other regions in Mexico.
Background
Gardner was born on July 17, 1889 in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Walter Gardner, a mining engineer, and Grace Adelma Waugh. In 1899 his father's work took the family to Oregon and, in 1902, to Oroville, California, where Gardner began his lifelong identification with California. For a brief period, the family lived in Alaska.
Education
Gardner graduated from Palo Alto High School in California in 1909 and enrolled at Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana. He was suspended after approximately one month when his interest in boxing became a distraction. He returned to California, pursued his legal education on his own, and passed the state bar exam in 1911.
Career
Gardner began his writing career in Malden. In the City of Malden Public School Souvenir, commemorating the city's sesquicentennial, there appears "Atalanta's Race, " a retelling of the myth of the golden apple, signed "Earle S. Gardner, Grade Four. " Gardner planned a career in law, and during one of his suspensions he worked in the law office of the deputy district attorney of Butte County. He worked briefly and then began to read law in Santa Ana, California, where he was admitted to the bar in 1911. He moved to Willows and then to Oxnard, a brawling town in Ventura County, where in 1911 he practiced in the office of I. W. Stewart. In 1915, Gardner formed a partnership with Frank Orr, a leading attorney in Ventura. Gardner briefly left the practice of law to pursue a career in sales. Broke, he returned in 1921 to his practice with Orr. That year he made his first attempts at writing fiction, but he was unable to produce anything marketable, save two brief, suggestive sketches that he sold to the magazine Breezy Stories. In 1923 he sold the novelette "The Shrieking Skeleton" to Black Mask, a leading pulp magazine. He was paid $160 for the story, which was published under the name Charles M. Green. During the 1920's, Gardner practiced law during the day and then wrote furiously until he finished his daily stint of 4, 000 words. By 1930, he had begun to dictate his fiction, and in 1932 he completed 224, 000 words while practicing law two days a week. Gardner wrote dozens of short stories and novelettes for magazines such as Black Mask, Western Stories, Argosy, and Detective Fiction Weekly. He also completed "Reasonable Doubt, " published as The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933), and "Silent Verdict, " published as The Case of the Sulky Girl (1933), the first two Perry Mason mystery novels. Both were rejected by popular magazines and by several book publishers but were accepted by Thayer Hobson of William Morrow and Company. They marked the beginning of a successful publishing record and popular-culture phenomenon. Gardner had no illusions about the literary quality of his writing. In unpublished autobiographical fragments he conceded that he had "no natural aptitude as a writer. " After the third novel, The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934), Gardner abandoned his law practice. For five years he wrote in house trailers parked at various sites in his beloved desert country. Meanwhile, he built several writing retreats in remote places. In 1938 he began buying 1, 000 acres of land at Temecula, in the high desert country southeast of Los Angeles, for a ranch and fiction factory called Rancho del Paisano. There Gardner dictated for three hours each morning, penciled revisions of the typescripts produced by as many as six secretaries, and dictated again later in the day. He began two other series, the Doug Selby novels, about a young, effective district attorney, and, under the name A. A. Fair, the Bertha Cool novels, about a middle-aged woman private investigator and her brash young assistant, Donald Lam. The Selby novels had nearly identical titles, such as The D. A. Calls It Murder and The D. A. Goes to Trial, while the Bertha Cool titles stressed alliteration, such as Widows Wear Weeds and All Grass Isn't Green. At his best, Gardner finished a novel within four weeks, even while working on other projects. In 1957, "Perry Mason, " with Raymond Burr as Mason, began a nine-year run on television. It was produced by Gardner's Paisano Productions. The show initially used Gardner's material and then that of other writers supervised by Gardner. Eventually it was dubbed or subtitled in sixteen languages, all of which contributed to what Gardner called a "gigantic" dollar volume, "enormous" profits, and "astronomical" taxes. On the last episode of the show, Gardner played the judge. In 1947, Gardner secured evidence that a man named William Marvin Lindley had been sentenced to death for a crime committed by someone else. Gardner secured a reprieve, then commutation, and finally freedom for the man. This led to the establishment of the Court of Last Resort, a panel of experts formed by Gardner and supported by Argosy magazine that met regularly to review such cases. Gardner eventually broke with Argosy, which had published his reports of cases reviewed and resolved, and he retired from the court. In March 1969 he finished his last Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Fabulous Fake, and he began a nonfiction work, Cops on Campus and Crime on the Streets. He finished his last A. A. Fair novel, All Grass Isn't Green, in July, just before his eightieth birthday. Years earlier, Gardner had learned that he had cancer, but he kept the diagnosis a secret. In October 1969 he entered the hospital for cobalt treatments but returned to his ranch to die. Gardner produced more than 140 books in his lifetime, including 80 in the Perry Mason series.
(UNLUCKY IN LOVE
Years ago Alden Leeds found a rich vein ...)
Connections
On April 9, 1912, Gardner married Natalie Frances Beatrice Talbert, they had one child. On February. 26, 1968, Gardner's wife died. Although they had been separated for thirty-five years, they had remained friends. On August 7, 1968, he married Jean Bethell, his secretary since 1930, who had been the model for Della Street.