This week, it’s all about the private eyes, be it the tried and true that we’ve come to love in this column, or a new fellow who’s also a art dealer. Yeah, I’m going back to the early days of BBB&B with the coverage of Donald Lam and Mike Shayne, with the introduction of another successful detective series: Lovejoy. Now only if I could get some hot secretary to work for me like these guys.

SOME SLIPS DON’T SHOW by Erle Stanley Gardner – Another in the canon of Gardener’s Bertha Cool/Donald Lam stories under the pen name of A.A. Fair, a series I never tire of for sheer twists and turns. In this 1957 entry, the agency is hired by a knuckle-cracking nebbish by the name of Barclay Fisher, who has received a letter detailing his exploits at a boating convention a few weeks prior. With Fisher being married and unable to remember exactly what happened, he wants Cool and Lam to investigate.

This sets off Lam on one of his patented investigations, first finds the girl in question: Lois Marlow. She tells Lam that all Fisher did was get really drunk, throw up and sleep it off. Lam questions her about George Cadott, the writer of the letter. She admits they have a history together, but that’s all the info she will give. Lam tells her straight out he is going to find him and get to the bottom of it.

After more investigating – namely, of Cadott’s sister, who lives in the same building as Marlow – Lam finds out where Cadott is holed up and plans on seeing him. But not without Fisher forcing himself into it by flying to San Francisco and going along with Lam to the hideout. Once there, Lam finds – shocks abound! – Cadott dead.

Gardner really take you down the garden path sometimes, painting such a picture that you have it all figured out. Then he pulls that proverbial rug out from under you with a little twist you did not expect. I’m not talking about “somebody new comes into the picture and they’re the killer”-type crap. No, I’m talking about how it might be really obvious someone did it, but Gardner throws you a huge change-up at the end.

SPEND GAME by Jonathan Gash – I may be bending the rules a bit including a Lovejoy novel in this column, but I’ve been meaning to read one. First off, my exposure to Lovejoy was the TV show starring a pre-DEADWOOD Ian McShane, a lovable rascal who has a penchant for solving crimes and being charming. Well, the books are a bit different.

Gash’s Lovejoy is more of a leech and a cad. He sleeps with any women he can; be they married or otherwise, he does not care. And there are scenes of brutal violence never mentioned on the show. (I wonder why, since that would make Lovejoy have more in common with Al Swearengen. This 1980 story deals with Lovejoy and a lady friend – the first of many in the book – seeing a pal’s car get run off the road into a ditch, killing his friend. A day later, Lovejoy is given a cryptic note from his now-dead pal.

A fine little mystery is this SPEND GAME, full of fun and suprises. Like I said, having only being exposed to the show, I really did not know how watered-down it was. Gash’s books are pretty easy to find, so there is plenty of Lovejoy to go around for all. But if you’re expecting some whimsical adventure, get ready for a bit gore and lechery.

NEVER KILL A CLIENT by Brett Halliday (but not really) – Sometimes, house authors just don’t know what they’re doing. This being one of the post-Halliday books written by ghost writers, 1962’s CLIENT starts out promising a little, then slowly gets crushed under its own weight.

We have detective Mike Shayne recieving a special-delivery letter from California telling him to catch the next flight for a case. This actually turns out to be a huge runaround for Mike, as once he catches up with the woman who sent the letter, she gives some ridiculous plot in the vein of the Bay of Pigs. Once Mike figures out she’s lying, the women admits it was just an elaborate joke. Mike calls back to his office and gets no response, so worriedly calls one of his buddies; turns out there is a dead body in his office and his secretary is missing.

That’s only the first 75 pages in a nutshell; it gets more confusing after that, with some sort of younger version of Shayne running around – an ex-con whom he supposedly visited in jail. And there’s an insurance investigator who thinks Mike has stolen a cache of money from a bond company. This book is just a total mess; I should have been forewarned when on his flight to Cali, he sits next to a woman who talks about Mike Shayne mysteries and the awful TV show they made out of it. Sadly, this was not one of the better Shayne mysteries, but I can’t complain since I got it for a total of one dollar.

Next week: HOGAN! –Bruce Grossman

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MISS EARLIER INSTALLMENTS OF ‘BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS’? REGASM THESE:
• #17: Lights! Camera! Action!
• #16: Go West
• #15: Speedy Reading in the Summertime
• #14: Direct from the Death Cloud Peril
• #13: Hammer and Tongs

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE BIGGER THEY COME by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASE OF THE HESITANT HOSTESS by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASEBOOK OF SIDNEY ZOOM by Erle Stanley Gardner
• CROWS CAN’T COUNT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• TARGET: MIKE SHAYNE by Brett Halliday