A. A Fair

The diminutive detective and his bulldog of a boss head to Las Vegas to find a runaway bride in this hard-boiled mystery by the creator of Perry Mason. Donald Lam and Bertha Cool make for a couple of unlikely detectives. Donald is a charming ex-lawyer in his thirties who may lack brawn but makes up for it in brains. Bertha, meanwhile, is a fifty-something-year-old widow who won't take lip from anyone. She certainly won't let a bout of illness keep...

THE RIMLEY RENDEZOUS was a back-street bistro where a tired businessman could drop in for a pick-up, no questions asked. The cover charge was steep, Blackmail was the major part of the tab. It was a lucrative business-until a murderer cut into the profits... and left his weapon in Donald Lam's car. The famous team of COOL and LAM at their fast-moving, quick-thinking best.

"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..."--Back cover.

Death gave its warning in the form of a luscious brunette. She walked into the office of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, calmly announced that her employer was about to be killed, and paid them a healthy fee to keep the boss alive. For Cool this case meant cold cash. For Lam it meant warm curves. But before long it meant murder...

"Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, the sleuths in this detective novel, develop a connection between a missing alcoholic and a wandering husband. Los Angeles and northern California." --

The opening chapter tells of a stealth theft from an armored car that was only discovered when the money went missing after the driver and guard stopped for coffee and doughnuts. The "Cool & Lam" agency gets a visit from Detective Sergeant Sellers because their name and number was found on a piece of paper in a suspect's possession -- the alleged girlfriend of a criminal found with half the loot. The police think this money was ordered by a big bookmaker....

Blackmail was a dirty business and Donald Lam liked to stay clear of it. But for his partner, Bertha Cool, no business was too dirty to handle at the right price. And the price for this job was certainly right. What was wrong, though, was a payoff for pictures that weren't worth a dime, a free dinner that cost the blackmailer his life, and more than a couple of double-crosses that framed Donald Lam quite neatly for a charge of murder ...

"Private investigators Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, stars of five of Hard Case Crime's most popular novels, return to solve their toughest case yet. Hired to prevent a socialite from poisoning her husband, Donald Lam dreams up an ingenious scheme involving a carton of anchovy paste and a fictitious national ad campaign. But when the whole thing backfires spectacularly and bodies, witnesses, and suspects start piling up, it'll take every ounce of Donald's...

Dealing with debtors turns deadly for a prickly PI in this hard-boiled mystery by the creator of Perry Mason and author of Bats Fly at Dusk. A hot-headed widow and a glass-jawed ex-lawyer, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam seem like an unlikely duo of private detectives. Even so, they've managed to solve the most difficult of mysteries-when they're together. With Donald now on a European vacation, Bertha is hesitant to accept any new business-but money...