You Can Die Laughing (1957) by A. A. Fair

Of all the books I expected to find in my uncle’s basement, a random book from the middle of the Cool & Lam series was not one of them.

A.A. Fair was the pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, better known as “the Perry Mason guy.” Under this name, he wrote the Cool & Lam series, starring Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Bertha  is “as unyielding as a roll of barbed wire” and her temper doesn’t match her name at all. Donald “doesn’t weigh over a hundred and thirty-five pounds soaking wet,” and has never won a fight in his life. Physical fights, anyway. Intellectual fights are a whole different matter, and he finds himself in the middle of one from chapter 2 onward.

Lawton C. Corning is a Texas oilman who wants Cool & Lam to find a woman, one Yvonne Wells.* He won’t say why, but he implied to Bertha on their first meeting that it has something to do with oil. Donald wasn’t there for that first meeting though, and now he’s denying he ever said anything about oil, or even mining rights. He just wants Mrs. Wells found. And he signs a check for one hundred and fifty when told the fee is one thousand. It’s just the beginning of a frustrating case. Drury Wells is semi-cooperative, but his next door neighbor thinks “that Mrs. Wells is buried in the sand dunes.” Not that that stops his wife from greeting Donald and the police when they go investigate…

From here, the book gets too complex to summarize. It takes a while for a central problem to materialize, and I flailed around a bit while reading, trying to grasp onto something solid. This wasn’t because the book was badly written mind you; I blazed through about 130 pages in one sitting. Gardner has a knack for making dialogue blocks that should be incredibly pointless and tiring feel engaging. You’ll quickly grasp the thrust of the conversation. I admit, however, that the book at times felt more like an extended short story than a full novel. Like The Case of the Counterfeit Eye, it’s less about the mystery and more about watching Lam run circles around the rest of the cast. He’s the one who says the title phrase to Corning, and ultimately has the last laugh over him.

All in all, this was a fun book. I can’t say that I’d recommend it to someone as their first Gardner, or even their first Fair, but it was a solid, if light, read. Recommended.

*Hah, a pun.