Hi Bill:
Yes, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, an unlikely duo of huge,
crude and direct Bertha, the P.I., and the small, shady and
brilliant private eye Donald. The first book, The Bigger They
Come, in 1939, introduced the characters. It wasn't until the
first 12 titles were published, in 1952, that the dust
wrapper of Top of the Heap confirmed the long rumored fact
that Fair, was in fact, Erle Stanley Gardner.
Bertha Cool owns a private investigation agency. She is big,
crude and stingy, adorned with a large tonnage of gold
jewelry and likes physical exertion only a little better than
spending money. Donald Lam, a lawyer whose frank trickiness
has run him afoul of the powers to be in the bar association,
causes him to change his profession from attorney to private
eye. Lam is tiny, about 120 pounds. Bertha weighs that much
in her gold jewelry alone.
I have always felt that Donald Lam is the Gardner character
which comes closest to the author's own personality and
experience as a young lawyer in Oxnard.
Anita
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