Review: Double or Quits - A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

Once again I found myself in need of a book that would read quickly and provide sure-fire entertainment. Well, fry me for an oyster, what better choice than Donald Lam, Bertha Cool, and Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair?

DOUBLE OR QUITS is the fifth book in the series, published in hardback by William Morrow in December 1941 and reprinted more times than I want to count in paperback since then, as well as currently being available in an e-book edition. As with most of Gardner’s novels, the plot is so complicated that it’s difficult to follow and almost impossible to summarize. Bertha Cool is on a bit of a health kick as this one opens, and she and Donald are out fishing on a barge. I immediately figured they were actually there working on a case, but no, they’re doing it for the exercise. However, a casual conversation with another angler nets them a new client and a challenging case. Their new fishing buddy is a doctor, and some of his wife’s valuable jewels have been stolen from a safe in their house. The wife is an invalid, and her secretary/companion has disappeared, so naturally the girl is the most logical suspect. The doctor hires Donald and Bertha to find the girl and recover the jewelry.

Of course, it’s nowhere near as simple as that. Before you know it, someone is dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Was it an accident, a suicide . . . or murder? As with many of Gardner’s novels, the plot hinges on his knowledge of some obscure point of law, in this case exactly what an insurance company considers a death by accidental means. Double indemnity is riding on the answer.

Along the way, there’s another murder, some false identities, several nice bits of trickery by Donald where he fools not only some of the other characters but also the reader, and finally a solution that, by and large, makes sense once Donald explains everything, which doesn’t happen until he’s almost become a murder victim himself. A month from now I’ll remember very little of the plot.

I will, however, remember that I had a lot of fun reading DOUBLE OR QUITS. I’ve long since given up trying to out-think Erle Stanley Gardner. I did pick out the murderer in this one, but it was mostly a guess. Instead of trying to figure it out, as I would, say, with an Ellery Queen or Agatha Christie novel, I just go along for the ride. In this series, it’s Donald’s brisk, funny narrative voice; in the Perry Mason books, it’s Mason’s hard-charging character, the give-and-take between Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake, and those great courtroom scenes. Gardner’s just a thoroughly entertaining writer, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s really the reason I read. If you’re a Cool and Lam fan, you’ll enjoy this one, and if you’re not, you really should give the series a try.