Hard Case Crime has once again unearthed another lost vintage mystery treasure--and it's a doozy! By 1939, wildly prolific mystery novelist Erle Stanley Gardner had published 15 Perry Mason novels in seven years. He started a new series under the pseudonym A.A. Fair, featuring the quarreling and sardonic detective team of Bertha Cool (immense, penny-pinching and foul-mouthed) and Donald Lam (smaller, brainy and prone to getting beat up). Gardner's publisher thought his proposed second book in the series, The Knife Slipped, was too shocking for the times and turned it down. Seventy-seven years later, it's finally in print--and it's worth the wait.
Fans of Gardner's straightforward and terse Perry Mason mysteries are in for a surprise and treat with the abundance of breezy and sarcastic humor found in The Knife Slipped. Like his Mason novels, The Knife Slipped is both fast moving and intricately plotted, but Lam's first-person narration allows much more freedom for Chandleresque descriptions and smart remarks. "I like loose clothes, loose company, and loose talk, and to hell with people who don't," declares Cool. The duo is hired to trail a philandering husband, but immediately after they discover he's leading a double life, he's murdered. With a crime scene crowded with suspects, including trigger-happy mobsters and shifty cops, it's up to the duo from the B. Cool Detective Agency to figure out whodunit.
This vintage hardboiled mystery has plenty of sass and energy, with intricate plotting and a delightful parade of suspects. The Knife Slipped is a treat that no mystery fan will want to miss. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant