Erle Stanley Gardner

To anyone who has followed his career, Ray Schindler was the greatest detective of the mid-twentieth century. He was a pioneer in scientific detection before modern forensic science, and he handled more than 10,000 cases covering almost every crime recorded on the police blotter. Rupert Hughes acts as a faithful Dr. Watson to Schindler’s Holmes, and guides us from case to case, watching a man who can’t be excited, can’t be stampeded , and can’t be frightened; a man who matches ingenuity of crime with an even greater mental resourcefulness; a man who has a dogged determination and a big fighting heart. Ray Schindler’s biography is the story of a great investigator, of a life that is packed with exciting adventures, and of criminals who are outwitted, out-fought, and defeated. Mere fictional detective stories pale in comparison to the real life drama inherent in every one of Ray Schindler’s cases.

Frances Celane has good reason to pout. Thanks to a provision in her late father's will administered by her uncle, she's caught in the middle of a family feud between matrimony and money. If she chooses marriage, she loses a million. But beautiful young Frances has a strong will of her own she's not afraid to use. One way or another, she means to hear wedding bells and cash registers making beautiful music together. Her first move: hire Perry Mason to orchestrate things. Unfortunately, stubbornness runs in Frances Celane's family, as Mason discovers when he confronts her Uncle Edward. After Perry's powers of persuasion fail to penetrate Norton's hard head, someone decides the only way of cashing in is by bashing in the uncooperative uncle's skull. But when the blood spills, so do the secrets. Then it's Mason's turn to brood, as he tries to figure out if a girl as pretty as his client could have a hand in something so ugly ...

Chow Koh Koh was a Chinese philosopher who rode his mule backwards. He claimed it made no difference where he was going. All that counted was what he did along the way. Terry Clane thought this a serene and comforting way of life. He liked it so much that he bought a small statue of Chow Koh Koh riding his mule, and gave it to his fiancée as a gift. That was Clane's mistake. Instead of a good luck symbol, it proved an omen of evil. For within a short time, Clane's favourite young lady was up to her neck in murder. And Clane's beloved statue of the peaceful and fatalistic Chow Koh Koh was covered with the blood of the killer's victim!

Douglas Selby, the ambitious young District Attorney of the territory around Madison City, had up before him a young man guilty of embezzling a comparatively small sum of money which he had spent gambling. Selby could have locked him up - and perhaps ruined his life. But he wanted to find the how and the why of this otherwise law-abiding young man's gambling. Selby's investigations led him to a hit-and-run motorcycle accident, to blackmail, and to the doorstep of DeWitt Stapleton, the local big-wig, who ran things in that part of the country by and for himself.

The little clergyman had died peacefully in bed in the Madison Hotel. But Douglas Selby, recently elected District Attorney, suspected there was more to this death than meets the eye, and soon knew that something was definitely wrong. So Doug finds himself faced not only with a wily murderer, but with virulence from a hostile press, reluctant witnesses, and a film star unwilling to explain why she was on the spot.

Bertha Cool was in a flap. The distinguished Mr Homer Breckinridge had been waiting twenty minutes for Donald Lam to make an appearance, and around Mr Breckinridge was the heady aroma of C-A-S-H. Then Donald appeared and in no time found himself hired to investigate an insurance claim. 'Such nice, safe, respectable work', purred Bertha, 'and it's up for grabs.'But it didn't take Donald long to find out he was anything but safe and that he was the one up for grabs ...

Donald Lam arrives at work one day to find an outraged police sergeant Frank Sellers stewing in the office of his senior partner, Bertha Cool. Sellers is close to cracking an armoured car robbery case, but in the course of his investigation, a telephone number for the Cool-Lam detective agency was found on one of his primary suspects - one Hazel Downer. The same Hazel Downer employs Donald Lam to find her husband who has run off with another broad, taking her fifty thousand dollars with him. Wasn't it fifty thousand dollars that haven't been recovered from the armoured car job ... ?

How did Donald Lam get all the dames? He was just a brainy little guy, but he had the damnedest way with women... The blondes melted like wax. "You're the first guy who's given me a break" said one. "Kiss me." Lam kissed her. "To hell with that stuff," she said. "Really kiss me." She was only the first - but even the busiest lady's man has to take time out for murder, especially when he's been too chummy with a corpse and the cops are out for blood...his blood.

The story of how a man can commit a brutal murder, confess, and get away with it! The killer was guilty without a shred of doubt. The police had him behind bars. The district attorney had plenty of evidence. But - no court in the state could convict him! The Bigger They Come features that fast-moving, skull-cracking team: Bertha Cool, a two-hundred pound "lady" who uses the language of a longshoreman. And Donald Lam, a pint-sized process server who would have been in the morgue long ago except that he can think faster than the next man ... or woman.

Perry Mason orders a double serving of trouble the night he and Della Street dine at an intimate restaurant after a hard day at law. In the middle of their steaks a waitress flees the premises in terror, leaving the puzzled proprietor holding her mink coat. Why a humble working girl abandons such a pricey wrap is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason's client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon, makes Perry himself a prime suspect, and blazes a gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department itself.

A suspicious personal ad conceals nefarious intent - and eventually lands in the lap of Perry Mason. It appears that Marilyn Marlow inherited a small fortune from her mother, who got the sum from her wealthy employer. But now the old man's relatives are contesting the will, putting Marilyn on shaky ground. Whoever sways Rose Keeling, the key witness to the signing of the will, is sure to be the victor. Enter the personal ad. Marilyn intends to find Rose a Mr. Right in order to get the goods on her. But when Rose is murdered, Perry Mason sets out to find a gentleman caller who had a date with death ...

Dr. Hilton Devarest was a whiz at curing patients, but his private life was sick, sick, sick. He lived with a wife who was as warped as she was repulsive, a secretary who enjoyed fun and games with the doctor every morning before breakfast, a niece who believed nice girls finished nowhere, and a nephew whose only means of support was making women happy. Donal Lam and Bertha Cool got involved with the not-so-good doctor when he hired them to find some stolen jewels. But soon they were in the fight of their lives against a killer who thought murder was the best medicine, and was out to treat them to an overdose of death...

Death gave its warning in the form of a luscious brunette. She walked into the office of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, calmly announced that her employer was about to be killed, and paid them a healthy fee to keep the boss alive. For Cool this case meant cold cash. For Lam it meant warm curves. But before long it meant murder ...

Blond Eve Dawson came to Hollywood to be a star and didn't make the grade. But as a party girl she was much in demand - until someone shot her during a wild party given for a lot of prominent politicians. Everyone clammed up and pressure was brought to bear - even on popular D. A. Doug Selby. But Selby and Sheriff Brandon wouldn't hush. The next time beautiful Eve turned up she was a corpse with a carving knife deep in her chest. And even that suave old fox A. B. Carr couldn't stop the D. A. from finding out who killed her and why.

Clayton Dawson came to Lam & Cool as a last resort. He needed an under-cover agent to 'protect the family name'. Bertha Cool didn't want to take the case, but Donald Lam talked her into it when their client laid twelve one-hundred-dollar bulls on the table. What seemed a simple case of protecting an undisciplined daughter soon erupted into an explosion of trouble for Lam - trouble in the form of murder and blackmail.

A cool girl hunt is what the blind man wanted. He was searching for a pretty young woman, soft spoken and slender, whom he'd never seen but knew had vanished, and he was willing to pay Bertha Cool anything to find her. The whole thing seemed impossible and sounded suspicious, but the man's money was right - even if his motives weren't - and given the choice Bertha always followed the dollar sign. Only this time, the dollar sign pointed to murder and fingered Bertha Cool as a red hot suspect.

Strange bedfellows can be political poison, and the candidate had picked himself a dilly. She was ruthless and corrupt and had enough on him to smear his shining armour with front page mud. Donald Lam and Bertha Cool told him not to worry. Women were Donald's speciality, the more dangerous the better. But when the lovely lady turned up dead, the case took an ugly twist. Suddenly Lam and Cool were in the middle of a red-hot race where bullets, not ballots, counted.

Ellen Robb came into Perry Mason's office with a gun in her purse. She had been framed, she said, by her gambler employer because she had refused to help fleece a customer. The customer had dropped nearly $10,000 in the gambling establishment and then done his best to pick up Ellen. His wife, none too pleased with either shenanigan, ended up dead as a herring. Della said Ellen was too beautiful to be trusted; Perry thought he could find out by switching guns on her - thus starting a series of explosions that nearly blast him out of court ...

When Norda Allison saw her husband-to-be slap his young son, she immediately called off the wedding. Now she is terrified. Her ex-fiancé has beaten up her new boyfriend, and anonymous newspaper clippings are flooding her mailbox - articles graphically depicting what jilted men do to the women who leave them. Then Norda's life takes an even darker turn. It begins with a barking dog, a child's scream, a gun shot, and the discovery of a dead body - and takes a further twist when Norda is arrested and charged with brutal murder. Now only the brilliant courtroom strategist Perry Mason stands between Norda and a sentence of certain death ...

Bertha Cool has just been released from a sanitarium where she has been recovering from flu and pneumonia, but soon she and Donald Lam are on the hunt for a missing bride-to-be. They become tangled in case filled with slot-machine skullduggery, a double-crossing client, murder and a spot of financial finagling before they eventually achieve their goal.