A New (Old) Book Just Waiting to Become a TV Series

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment

One of the most popular and longest-running TV shows in history is Perry Mason, in which Raymond Burr played the almost-always victorious defense lawyer, based on a series of bestselling books by Erle Stanley Gardner. But mystery fans know that Gardner had a second series of bestselling novels — 29 of them! — featuring the team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Now a previously unpublished Cool and Lam book has just been released: The Knife Slipped (Hard Case Crime) is a terse, tough, hard-boiled mystery from 1939 about murder and adultery.

Erle Stanley Gardner as a judge in 'Perry Mason'
Erle Stanley Gardner as a judge on Perry Mason.

Bertha Cool runs the small detective agency that employs investigator Donald Lam. Cool is one unique, tough character. Here’s the way Gardner introduces her in The Knife Slipped: “She was big — big all over, and she was completely unrestrained. As she herself expressed it on occasion, ‘I like loose clothes, loose company, and loose talk, and to hell with people who don’t.’ ” The main reason The Knife Slipped — conceived as the second book in the Cool-Lam series — was never released is that the publisher objected Bertha Cool’s inclination to “talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.”

Come on: Are you telling me this wouldn’t be a great role for a woman in 2016 television? By contrast, Donald Lam is a flinty little wiseguy who does the legwork for Cool’s cases, and takes the punches when a client or a suspect gets mad. In 1958, CBS tried to launch a series based on these characters called Cool and Lam, starring Benay Venuta as Bertha and Billy Pearson as Donald. The pilot was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who did such terrific movies as Cat People and the great films noir Out of the Past and Nightfall. The TV show, however, was a flop. Check it out for yourself:

The Lam character has a peculiar TV distinction: He was portrayed by two of the most different performers imaginable. In the late 1940s, Frank Sinatra played Lam in an episode of The United States Steel Hour of Mystery. A few years later, the anthology series Climax! featured a Lam played by … Art Carney — Ed Norton on The Honeymooners!

If I were a TV producer, I’d be snapping up the rights to the Cool and Lam stories and conceiving a new show. As it is, you can read The Knife Slipped and dream-cast your own TV series for it.