This image is the cover for the book Owls Don't Blink, The Bertha Cool and Donald Lam Mysteries

Owls Don't Blink, The Bertha Cool and Donald Lam Mysteries

An odd couple of detectives descends on New Orleans to search for a missing heiress in this hard-boiled mystery by the creator of Perry Mason.

Bertha Cool is a bulldog of a woman with an attitude to match. Donald Lam is a handsome ex-lawyer who makes up for in brains what he lacks in brawn. Together, they’re an unlikely pair of private detectives on a mission to find Roberta Fenn, a missing model and heiress in New Orleans. It’s a seemingly simple case of lost and found . . .

Except, Donald can’t help but wonder why someone would hire a firm out of Los Angeles instead of one based in the Big Easy. Also, locating Roberta proves surprisingly effortless. Keeping track of her is not. She disappears, leaving a body behind in her apartment. Now Cool and Lam must find Roberta and a killer, before someone makes them disappear as well . . .

“Cool and Lam are an amusing and endearing pair—perfect foils for one another.” —Monica Muller, 1001 Nights: The Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction

“No one has ever matched Gardner for swift, sure exposition.” —Kirkus Reviews

Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was an author and lawyer who wrote nearly 150 detective and mystery novels that sold more than one million copies each, making him easily the best-selling American writer of his time. He ranks as one of the most prolific specialists of crime fiction due to his popular alter ego, lawyer-detective Perry Mason. A self-taught lawyer, Gardner was admitted to the California bar in 1911 and began defending poor Chinese and Mexicans as well as other clients. Eventually his writing career, which began with the pulps, pushed his law career aside. As proven in his Edgar Award–winning The Court of Last Resort, Gardner never gave up on the cases of wrongly accused individuals or unjustly convicted defendants.
 

Open Road Media