Cool & Lam
28 total works
Bertha Cool has just been released from a sanitarium where she has been recovering from flu and pneumonia, but soon she and Donald Lam are on the hunt for a missing bride-to-be.
They become tangled in case filled with slot-machine skullduggery, a double-crossing client, murder and a spot of financial finagling before they eventually achieve their goal.
You might call Bertha Cool the broad beam of the Cool and Lam Detective Agency. As this story begins, all 200-odd pounds of her are quivering happily at the thought of a fat fee to come.
All Bertha has to do is guard the priceless treasures of wealthy explorer Dean Crockett II, who is about to throw a fabulous party. But somebody's hand is quicker even than Bertha's gimlet eye, and one valuable jade Buddha and a primitive blowgun disappear.
That's when brainy bantam-weight Donald Lam steps in, and the pace sets off fiercely, before reaching a sensational, unexpected climax.
Two incidents involving a Peeping Tom are reported from the Swim and Tan Motel to the detective agency belonging to Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Bertha, meanwhile, has warned Donald to steer clear of the dangerous jobs and stick to aiding solid, sane citizens like Montrose L. Carson. And all Carson wants is the name of the informer in his office who is passing on confidential material to a business rival, Herbert Dowling.
But when Dowling is murdered at the Swim and Tan Motel, it looks as though Bertha has picked the wrong client, and Donald the right girl when he chooses a lively bait to catch the Peeping Tom ... and the murderer.
Clayton Dawson came to Lam & Cool as a last resort. He needed an under-cover agent to 'protect the family name'.
Bertha Cool didn't want to take the case, but Donald Lam talked her into it when their client laid twelve one-hundred-dollar bulls on the table. What seemed a simple case of protecting an undisciplined daughter soon erupted into an explosion of trouble for Lam - trouble in the form of murder and blackmail.
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 ...