Turn on the Heat by Erle Stanley Gardner is considered one of the best Cool and Lam novels in the acclaimed series, now made available from Hard Case Crime. Love old-school suspense yarns? Yes? Then you’ll love Erle Stanley Gardner’s (writing as A. A. Fair) California-set Turn on the Heat. This was originally supposed to…
The Knife Slipped by Erle Stanley Gardner was meant to be the 2nd book in the Cool & Lam Mystery series but was shelved and subsequently lost for 75 years until Hard Case Crime got their hands on it (Available December 6, 2016). Outside the mystery and detective community, the name Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1966)…
In the late 1960s, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the most popular science fiction writers in Russia, decided to write a mystery novel. The Dead Mountaineer's Inn was published in 1970, and its creation may have been motivated in part by the weariness they felt struggling with the Soviet authorities. Once writers of optimistic science fiction that…
At age nine, I became hooked on the legal/mystery series Perry Mason, then in its fourth year on CBS. The first episode of season 4 aired on September 17, 1960. Despite what the calendar said, it was culturally still the 1950s. Dwight Eisenhower was president (John F. Kennedy would be elected six weeks later). Most…
Philip Marlowe might not have had a secretary, but Sam Spade knew better. Who else do you trust to bring you the dingus but your loyal secretary? Who else can you depend on to fend off inconvenient lovers or nasty cops, and deal with dead ship captains? Dashiell Hammett’s Effine Perrine is just one of…
According to Variety, Robert Downey Jr. is teaming with Warner Brothers to star in a Perry Mason project to be set back in 1930’s L.A., a temptation for any director or cinematographer, I’d think. Secretary Della Street will be there, too, and that’s also a tempting role needing plenty of pluck and red lipstick. Will…
A crime is a crime, isn’t it? Well, jaywalking is a crime. (Though when was the last time you even heard that term used, much less heard of someone being cited for it.) So is murder. So is conspiracy to commit treason. So all crimes are not created equal, and such is the glorious nature…
