One morning Barclay Fisher awakes in the apartment of a beautiful woman. He is threatened with blackmail-- and he is pretty sure his wife will never understand. Hence his pitiful appeal to Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Bertha smells money, and Donald heads for San Francisco. There he has quite a time with the glamorous "other woman," a disconcerting and hilarious encounter with modern art, and a very nasty turn when he finds the body.

Jarvis C. Archer was a very big fish in a very big pond. He also was one of those "Big I -- Little You" types. And he was insisting on twenty-four-hour protection for his secretary who, despite an unlisted number, was being harassed by threatening telephone calls. At first Bertha Cool was outraged by the sweatshop hours (for obvious reasons she would have to take the night shift), but the size of the fee was both soothing and persuasive. So Cool and...

When Donald Lam and Bertha Cool cut in on a deal, they "Cut thin to win." The man's name was Clayton Dawson. The Cool-Lam Agency was so well known he'd come from Denver for help on highly confidential matter... After adjusting to the fact that "Cool" was a woman (a "Big Bertha" as it turned out) and "Lam" looked like he couldn't hurt a fly (an outrageous deceit), Dawson shelled out a fat retainer and put his cards on the table. The question was: Were...

"Lost for more than 75 years, The Knife Slipped was meant to be the second book in the [Cool and Lam] series, but shelved when Gardner's publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool's tendency to 'talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.' But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities -- however shocking for 1939 -- shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday...

"Bertha Cool is the gruff, tough-talking, corpulent head of her private detective agency, opened after the death of her husband; Donald Lam is her meek, slight, and nervy new hire, who makes up for a lack of boldness with brilliant deductive work. The duo couldn't be any more dissimilar but, with their skills combined, they are an unstoppable force when it comes to solving crimes, as evidenced by their over two dozen successes in the long-running...