Shills Can't Cash Chips

by Erle Stanley Gardner

Overview

From Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner - during his life, the best-selling American author of all time — comes a lost classic of detective fiction featuring private eyes Donald Lam (once played by Frank Sinatra!) and Bertha Cool.

"What I can say is that for those who like their crime fiction to be high-octane, this novel is a stunner." The Daily Mail

HBO series Perry Mason, based on characters from Erle Stanley Gardner's novels, airs June 2020 starring Matthew Rhys in the titular role.

HAS DONALD LAM GONE OVER TO THE DARK SIDE?

From the world-famous creator of PERRY MASON, Erle Stanley Gardner - at his death the best-selling American writer of all time - comes another baffling case for the Cool & Lam detective agency. Return to the 1960s as a simple insurance investigation into a car accident puts Bertha Cool and Donald Lam on the trail of murder - and Donald hip-deep in danger when he poses as an ex-con to infiltrate a criminal gang. It's Gardner's twistiest caper ever, and a fitting conclusion to Hard Case Crime's revival of this classic (and long unavailable) detective series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785656361
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	11/24/2020
Series:	Hard Case Crime
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	495,355
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 - March 11, 1970) was an American lawyer and author. Though best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces, as well as a series of non-fiction books, mostly narrations of his travels through Baja California and other regions in Mexico. The best-selling American author of the 20th century at the time of his death, Gardner also published under numerous pseudonyms, including A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray and Robert Parr.

Editorial Reviews

04/06/2020

A car accident in Colinda, Calif., drives this appealing Cool and Lam caper from Gardner (1889–1970), first published in 1961. The chunky Berta Cool, the head of the Cool Detective Agency, believes she’s got a line on some respectable detective work that’s easier and more lucrative than her agency’s usual dangerous jobs. An insurance company wants the agency to look into the sudden disappearance of Vivian Deshler, who was involved in the accident and was considering making a claim. The diminutive Donald Lam, Cool’s employee, drives to Colinda, where he encounters a bevy of short-skirted babes and suspicious activity in the sales offices of a subdivision development. Lam spends a lot of time driving around, until a local cop tries to pin a murder on him, and then he must perform the obligatory clearing of his name. Overall, this is a quieter case than usual for Lam. Instead of getting the snot beaten out of him, he’s only knocked out once by a clean punch. This is just the ticket for fans of retro crime fiction. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Fun, entertaining, and addictive... Brain candy. Reading for pleasure as it’s meant to be... Once again, Hard Case Crime breathes new life into a classic crime fiction novel.” – New York Journal of Books

"A sterling example of how the job of writing private-eye fiction is properly performed by a master of the genre." – BookReporter 

"For those who like their crime fiction to be high-octane, this novel is a stunner." – Daily Mail

“A delightful read with innumerable twists and turns, a satisfying ending, and great one-liners – what’s not to love about Shills Can’t Cash Chips?” – STORGY Review

“Fans of golden-age pulp fiction will love this resurrected wisecracking 1961 example of the genre... It’s packed with dangerous dames, scams, mobsters and the like, very redolent of the Bogie and Cagney era movies.” – Peterborough Telegraph Review

"If you’re looking for some entertaining mysteries, I recommend the Lam/Cool series and especially this newly reprinted volume."  – George Kelley

“Shills Can’t Cash Chips is Gardner at his hilarious best... do yourselves a favor and pick this up. Everyone needs a good laugh now and then."  -Pulp Fiction Review

From the Publisher

2020-03-29
Hard Case exhumes a tale of Bertha Cool, Donald Lam, and a dizzyingly complicated insurance scam originally published under the name A.A. Fair in 1961.

Bertha couldn’t be happier that Cool & Lam is finally getting work from a high-profile client like Lamont Hawley, who heads the claims department at Consolidated Interinsurance. Well-insured real estate sharpshooter Carter J. Holgate, one of his clients, recently plowed into the rear of a stopped car driven by divorcée Vivian Deshler, who claims to have suffered whiplash. Consolidated wants to know more about the claimant but can’t get close to her, and they think Donald, whose history of charming lovely ladies is well attested (as in books like 1940’s Turn on the Heat), will have better luck than their own investigators. The job is suspiciously easy. Donald, posing as the world’s most polite ex-con and a witness to the accident, succeeds in getting within snuggling distance of Vivian, her friend and neighbor Doris Ashley, and Holgate’s secretary, Lorraine Robbins. He can’t help wondering why everyone involved is so eager to prompt, accept, record, and reward his obviously false testimony when it’s only going to put Holgate and Consolidated on the hook for what feels more and more like a bogus claim. When a corpse turns up in the trunk of the car Donald drives for the agency, the police have quite a few questions of their own, and what seemed like a simple scam turns out to have more layers and a more pungent fragrance than a month-old onion.

A high-spirited romp you’ll be sorry to see end.

Kirkus Reviews