Some Women Won't Wait

Cool and Lam #14

by A.A. Fair, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert McGinnis (Illustrator)

Hardcover; Very Good; Light yellow boards with black printing on the spine. Spine is tight, there are no tears in the book. A number is written on the top of the first page, no other marks in book. Bertha Cool and Donald Lam

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1953

About the author

A.A. Fair is a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner.

Reviews

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fifteenth entry in the Donald Lam/Bertha Cool series begins in the firm's offices in L.A., but quickly moves to a cruise ship and, ultimately, to the Hawaiian Islands. A client whom Bertha described as a "fragile little pipsqueak," appears in the office. Lam guesses the man to be about forty-five, but he appears very infirm. He also appears to be loaded with dough, however, and in Bertha's mind, that's all that counts.

The man, whose name is Bicknell, is concerned about a young woman names Miriam Woodford. Miriam, or Mira, was formerly married to Bicknell's partner Ezra Woodford. Woodford was sixty-nine, and Mira, who's an absolute knockout, was twenty-seven. Ezra was able to enjoy six months of wedded bliss before he died suddenly, leaving a fortune to his young widow.

Bicknell, who seems unduly solicitous of the widow, believes that she may be being blackmailed. Mira is about to sail for Hawaii, and Bicknell wants Bertha to sail on the ship with her and protect her. Bertha is dead-set against the idea and wants Donald to go instead. Bicknell insists that he wants a woman on the job and in the end, both Donald and Bertha make the trip.

Inevitably, of course, one thing leads to several others. Donald manages to work his way into Mira's circle while on board the ship and will maintain the relationship once in the islands. Before long, someone will be dead and Donald and Bertha will be in the soup up to their necks. As always, it will take some pretty clever thinking and some very fancy footwork on Donald's part it they're going to get out of the mess.

Whenever I read a book in a series like this where the protagonist suddenly leaves his or her familiar surroundings and goes off to someplace exotic, I assume that the author is looking for a way to write off a great vacation as a research expense. Whatever the case, this is a very entertaining novel and it's fun to see Cool and Lam out of their element. A good, quick read.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool & Lam go to Hawaii. #14 in the series, my 15th (there's a 1.5 now), and my 18th overall by Gardner, I believe. Gardner doesn't write as pretty as Chandler, and he's neither great at nor consistent in his chracterization, but do so enjoy his plots, and Lam is my favorite PI. Not thrilled with how he handles Bertha, but that's old news. This was fun.

Now I just wish HardCase, or Open Road, or whoever would hurry up and reissue the rest of the series on kindle. Just under half are available now, and these ancient paper volumes are overpriced on the used market and unpleasant to read due to the acidic paper that was used turning them to stinky irritating dust.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set first on a cruise ship headed across the Pacific and then in the tropical paradise of Honolulu, this book explores the question of what happens when a young vibrant sexy woman marries a wealthy man more than twice her age and he dies within six months. What happened? Why is she hiding on a tropical beach all alone and not dressed in mourning black? Is the truth that she simply couldn't wait? What trouble is she in?

In the world of Cool and Lam, coolheaded brainy Donald Lam usually solves cases and overweight overbearing Bertha Cool stumbles about without thinking it through. That is certainly true here as she gets her self in plenty of hot water. And, Donald does his best James Bond impression with the women on the hot Hawaiian beach.

Well-written and easy to read, this story is a nonstop thrill ride and one of the best in the series.

[Ben A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent entry in the Cool & Lam series as their latest case takes them to Hawaii but still maintains all the usual twists and turns I've come to expect from the series fourteen books in and going strong.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amusing murder mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner, the author of the Perry Mason series of mysteries, involving an unlikely pair of detectives, a sizable female who is focused on being paid for the detective work, and her partner, a diminutive male who is notable for using his brains and not brawn to solve the case. Reading this mystery, which was great fun, although it is a "period" piece, made me wonder why no one had made it into a movie, since while there were some stereotypes, the protagonists offered some great characters for portrayal by some modern day actresses/comedians and actors.

[Tim Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another nice entry in to the Cool & Lam series. Donald and Bertha are hired to go to Hawaii to protect a young widow from blackmail. The change of scenery is nice and adds an interesting look at the way the new state was perceived at the time. Gardner brings in another intelligent out-of-town cop with the Honolulu police chief. And we have another little legal issue of the type Gardner loves to throw in. Good easy read again.

[Colin Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another adventure of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Drawn away from California by a lucrative offer from a wealthy businessman to protect a young woman said to be blackmailed in Hawaii. Bertha is her usual stubborn self hating the experience but gradually mellowing while Donald does all the actual detecting. It is a good twisting plot that gradually unravels after a murder is committed. All good characters that you can like or hate as the story is told. Oh! and local police which is more efficient than is often the case in this type of crime novel.

3 good stars for this one.

[Stven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This episode in the delightful Lam & Cool series is for the most part more light-hearted than the average. A lot of the story takes place on a cruise ship with Donald getting acquainted with a vivacious young woman who'll be one of the main suspects in the case, and a lot of it takes place in Honolulu.

There's no particular reason the story had to be set in Honolulu. I have a feeling Erle Stanley Gardner took a pleasure trip to the Islands around 1952 and enjoyed the atmosphere and figured he might as well indulge himself and write about it. (I'll bet he wrote off the whole trip as "research," too!) So we get Donald paddling around on a surfboard, Bertha contemplating the hula, and a police detective who has a whole different style of getting in their hair from the guy we're used to back in California.

The mystery/detection underpinning of the story is first-rate, too. The last time I read this novel must have been at least 20 years ago, and even while musing that some of these details were starting to feel familiar, I was happy to relax and enjoy the ride.

[Rabb_eye · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wealthy businessman hires Cool & Lam to join him on a cruise to Hawaii in order to protect a woman from blackmailers. (Bertha Cool is not having this, but she gradually softens to the experience over the course of the book, which generates a fair amount of humor.) A known blackmailer -- who may or may not be blackmailing the woman they're to protect -- turns up dead.

Readers of other Cool & Lam books will find themselves in comfortably familiar territory: Beautiful women fall for Donald Lam and all but seduce him; Bertha Cool grouches about how to get more money out of their client; Donald gets beaten up...

The change of scenery from the big city to island vacation is a nice twist. The descriptions of beaches, hotels, surfing & outrigger canoes help put the reader into early 1950s Hawaii, which is delightful. The plot is typically twisty. The constant threat of surveillance by local police or blackmailers increases the tension. The reveal in the final pages is, well, revealing.

All in all, a very enjoyable light read you can knock out in the course of a couple quiet evenings.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the better Cool and Lams, because it takes them away from Los Angeles and gets Bertha out of the office. Usually Bertha is very two-dimensional, saying the same stock things and being described the same way--greedy, overweight, easy to anger. This time a rich businessman hires both of them to go on a cruise to Hawaii and once there help the widow of his business partner, who has some sort of problem for which she needs money. Lam figures out it's blackmail. Mira's husband was significantly older, rich, and died unexpectedly, and conveniently enough shortly after she had bought a lot of arsenic for his taxidermy hobby. She's flirtatious, especially towards Donald Lam, which annoys Steve Bicknell, who has not only hired the detectives, but seems to be in love with her. There's a murder, Lam is beaten up, and Bertha relaxes enough to buy some Hawaiian clothes and learn to hula. The twists at the end about how Mira's husband died and who killed one of the blackmailers is a good one.

[Jiří Pavlovský · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zrovna, když jsem frflal, že Fairovky jsou na jedno brdo, tak přichází změna – Berta Coolová musí vyrazit na Honolulu. Původně sama, ale nakonec unese Donalda Lama, takže zatímco on pak vyšetřuje případ vydírání a vraždy, ona postupně podléhá vlivu okolí a nejenže se převlékne do plavek, ale navíc i začne i trochu utrácet.

Jak se mění prostředí, tak se mění i postavy… tedy aspoň Berta, Donald Lam je stále stejný dokonalý prázdný flek ve tvaru detektiva. Někdy bych byl fakt rád, kdyby měl nějaké emoce.

Ostatně, emoce nenajdete ani v případu. Jak je u Faira časté, je hodně antiemoční – přijde mi, že motivem většiny z nich jsou peníze, získání nějakého dědictví, žádné vášně ani podobná jiná zvěrstva. Takže jediné, co je na tomhle případu šokující, je to, že Lam tady není ani na chvíli v ohrožení kariéry či svobody.

[Sreedhar Pothukuchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by Erle Stanley Gardner under the pen-name of A.A.Fair. A reasonable detective story, much better than the regular Perry Mason legal novels. Very well written, short and enjoyable.
An ideal book for short trips & lay-overs.

[Robert Vanneste · Rating 4 out of 5]

I prefer this series with Lam and Cool to the Perry Mason series .

[COL(ret.) Frank J. Stech, PhD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than average for Cool and Lam. Not as twisted as most of the plots in the series. Nice use of the Honolulu setting. Even the cops are nice. Aloha and Mahalo!

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both Bertha and Donald end up in Hawaii for this one. Bertha does not enjoy it.

[Gregory Van Den Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another superb story by "Mr. Fair." This was another excellent book to read. I receive so much enjoyment in reading this series. They may be light but very entertaining.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man named Bicknell hires the firm of Cool & Lam to protect a widow named Mira Woodford and her friend Norma. Mira is a young woman who was married to Bicknell's business partner Ezra until his death. There was a significant difference in their ages and Mira will inherit a great deal as a consequence of Ezra's death. Bicknell wants to hire a woman, namely Bertha Cool, to make friends with Mira and Norma on a cruise ship to Hawaii, but Bertha wants Donald to go along. However, Donald does not want to go, so Bertha uses deceitful tactics to get Donald on the ship, locking him in a room until the ship has left port.
The cruise to Hawaii is one where the people get to know each other, other than that it is uneventful. After a short time in Hawaii, Bertha and Bicknell find a blackmailer named Bastion murdered and the suspicion immediately falls on Mira and Norma. Donald begins falling for the feminine charms of the girls, their being scantily dressed certainly helps them achieve that, and he manages to get them around some of the worst of the problems. Donald runs afoul of another blackmailer, gets beat up and then escapes. With Donald's help, the police manage to unmask the real killer and Donald and Bertha's work is done.
This is typical of Gardner's stories, with the interspersion of elements of feminine exposure and desire in a murder mystery. For example, on page 173 Mira is in the back seat of the car and Donald is driving. Mira says, "If you haven't seen legs before I'm going to shock you." `She pulled her skirt up above her knees and came over to the front seat.' The climactic exposure of the murderer is not all that dramatic, to me, it was clear for some time who the murderer was.
If you are a fan of the Gardner style of writing, then you will enjoy this book. It is sexist, chauvinistic and typical of the style of detective stories of the forties and fifties.

This review also appears on Amazon

[Tiina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donald Lam of Cool & Lam detective agency continues in good form. He's clever and one step ahead of those who are trying to fool him.

This story takes both Cool and Lam to Hawaii, which makes for an interesting environment. The plot is complicated enough to keep up the interest, but not overly so.

Very nice! Written in the early 1960's I think but did not sound too old-fashioned.

[Woody Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am finding this series to be more & more compelling as I go along. I was really interested by the way that ESG/AAF moved the locale from the usual SoCal to a cruise ship and eventually, Hawaii. Bertha Cool was more immersed in the action of the plot than usual, which was also a departure. It made for a quick read and now, it is on to the next one.

I will be saddened when I finish the series, but conversely, I am glad that I waited until now to read them. I bought most of my collection as a very young ESG Perry Mason fan, but I found this series tougher to comprehend and set them aside for nearly forty years!