Fools Die On Friday

Book excerpt: From Perry Mason-creator Erle Stanley Gardner comes a lost classic of detective fiction featuring private eyes Donald Lam (once played by Frank Sinatra!) and Bertha Cool. "About the best of the series... perhaps since the very first." — Raymond Chandler Private investigators Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, stars of five of Hard Case Crime’s most popular novels, return to solve their toughest case yet. Hired to prevent a socialite from poisoning her husband, Donald Lam dreams up an ingenious scheme involving a carton of anchovy paste and a fictitious national ad campaign. But when the whole thing backfires spectacularly and bodies, witnesses, and suspects start piling up, it’ll take every ounce of Donald’s brainpower and Bertha’s bruising ruthlessness to keep the police at bay – and a killer from getting away with murder.