The Knife Slipped

October 3, 2016
A gumshoe assigned to work a simple divorce case ends up accused of murder in this fast, often funny crime novel, written in 1939 but not published until now. On the run from the law, the detective is the diminutive but tough Donald Lam, who works for the enormous Bertha Cool (“She was a wise baby, was Bertha Cool”) in Yucca City in what may be California. Constantly counting odds and ways to play them, Bertha figures she can take a cut out of the case of police corruption that Lam has tumbled to, if the knife doesn’t slip—and if her operative doesn’t fall for the dame who makes for their best suspect. The prolific Gardner published 29 novels about Cool and Lam (and more than 80 featuring lawyer Perry Mason). As Russell Atwood (Losers Live Longer) explains in his afterword, this case was to have been the second in the series, but when the publisher nixed it, Gardner just wrote 27 more. For fans of classic hard-boiled whodunits, this is a time machine back to an exuberant era of snappy patter, stakeouts, and double-crosses.

October 1, 2016
A remarkable discovery: not a new novel about Bertha Cool and Donald Lam but their second adventure, originally written in 1939 but unpublished till now.Edith Cunner and her mother, Mrs. Atterby, come to B. Cool, Investigations because no other agency in town will tell them if Eben Cunner is cheating on his wife of five years. Donald, a part-time op still years from making partner, agrees to follow Eben and quickly discovers that his wife is half right. Eben is indeed meeting an attractive blonde in a unit of the Mountain Crest Apartments hes rented under an assumed name, but its for a much more criminal purpose than mere adultery. In short order, Eben is shot to death with a .38 revolver Mountain Crest switchboard operator Ruth Marr presses on Donald, and his mission switches from getting the goods on Eben to protecting Ruth from a murder charge. Bertha, however, never changes gears along with him; her paramount objective is to cut herself on the action. Unfortunately, her scheme backfires, leaving the agency scrambling to stay one step ahead of crooked cops, gangsters, hired guns, and suspected killers. Maybe Gardners publisher rejected the novel because it seemed too racy, with a female detective who swears like a sailor and a romantic lead who describes herself as a nymphomaniac, though its not in the same league as No Orchids for Miss Blandish, published the same year. Maybe because it casts Bertha and Donald in unexpected rolesshe runs rings around him as a detective, contrary to their usual practice, as Russell Atwood points out in his informative Afterword. Maybe because the mystery is both muddled and unmysterious. Even so, fans will rejoice at another dose of Gardners unexcelled mastery of pace and an unexpected new taste of his duos cyanide chemistry. For all its pulpy limitations, this road not taken is worth reading if only for its heroines hard-boiled wisdom: You cant have understanding without empathy, and you cant have empathy without losing money.

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