Old Bestseller Review: Crows Can't Count, by "A. A. Fair" (Erle Stanley Gardner)

Old Bestseller Review: Crows Can't Count, by "A. A. Fair" (Erle Stanley Gardner)

by Rich Horton

When I was a teenager I came across a couple of paperbacks of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason books and tried them -- they didn't really interest me much. And a while back I read a science fiction story by him which was simply dreadful. But I knew of his other major series -- the Cool and Lam stories, written under the name "A. A. Fair", featuring an atypical pair of detectives -- the 60ish widow Bertha Cool and her employee, later partner, Donald Lam, a smallish man in his 30s. These books seemed interesting.

Gardner (1889-1970) was trained as a lawyer and practiced for a while, mainly representing poorer people and immigrants. Later he founded the Court of Last Resort, sort of a prototype for later organizations such as the Innocence Project -- aimed at getting fair treatment for people convicted without proper represenation. He turned to writing in the '20s and after his first Perry Mason books was published he quit practicing law, but his experience, obviously, was central to his writing.

Recently I've bought a few of the Cool and Lam books -- some in the Hard Case Crime reprint series at Worldcon, others at an estate sale recently. I decided to try one of the earlier books in the series, Crows Can't Count, from 1946. (The first book appeared in 1939 and he ended up publishing 30 Cool and Lam novels, writing them until the end of his life.) My copy is a 1960 Dell reprint with a beautiful cover by Bob McGinnis, one of the great illustrators of paperbacks.

The book opens with the agency being hired by one Harry Sharples, who wants them to find out what happened to an emerald necklace that ended up in the possession of a local dealer. It seems Sharples and a certain Robert Cameron are co-trustees for the heirs of Cora Hendricks, who had owned a gold mine in Colombia. The heirs, both in their 20s, are Shirley Bruce and Robert Hockley. Hockley is apparently a gambler, and to keep him under control the trustees have limited their disbursements to both heirs. Very quickly Lam and Sharples visit Cameron -- only to find that he's been murdered. And the there is a necklace -- sans emeralds -- on his table. And his pet crow is missing. 

Things get complicated quickly. Shirley Bruce is visited, and she immediately puts the moves on Lam -- who knows by then that Sharples is a bit more attracted to her than appropriate for his position as a 50ish man with a quasi-fatherly relationship. Another young woman is put forward as owner of the necklace. It's made clear that Colombia controls much of the world's emerald supply, and strictly limits exports. A former servant of Cora Hendricks, Juanita Grafton, and her artist daughter Dona are involved as well - and Dona is caring for the crow. Harry Sharples wants Donald Lam to act as his bodyguard, and Lam refuses, infuriating the avaricious Bertha Cool. Pretty much everyone heads for Colombia to see what's up at the mine -- and the Colombian authorities take an interest ...

There are some nice bits here. Gardner's very sympathetic portrayal of Colombia and its people is interesting, and Dona Grafton, the young artist, is a nice character. Donald Lam, the narrator, comes off well enough. Bertha Cool struck me as a somewhat sexist caricature, alas. The other characters barely come into real focus. The mystery is highly complicated -- perhaps too much so -- and is revealed too much by telling and not really showing. There is a worthwhile twist that's kind of fumbled. The solution makes reasonable sense but seems overcomplicated.

Which all means, I guess, that I wasn't wholly thrilled with the book. I'll read some more Cool and Lam books, but this one doesn't really work, on the whole.