The Knife Slipped was supposed to be the second book in the Donald Lam/Bertha Cool series that Erle Stanley Gardner wrote under his A. A. Fair pseudonym. Gardner wrote to his editor, Hobson at William Morrow, with this description of The Knife Slipped:
“In any event, this Donald Lam-Bertha Cool yarn won’t sell to the movies and won’t sell to magazines. It’s going to run around 75,000 words. It deals with a highly sexed girl from the country who cuts loose all at once and comes to the conclusion she is a nymphomaniac. Bertha Cool sails majestically through its pages, delightfully hard boiled. When she and Donald call on the wife of a city official, who puts on the high-hat act when Donald tires to talk with her, Berta Cool says, “Just a moment Donald, let me handle this bitch.” The wife stiffens into frigid indignation and demands of Bertha Cool, “What was that word you used?” and Bertha Cool says, “Bitch, dearie, b-i-t-c-h, bitch. It means slut.”
But when Hobson read the manuscript, he fired back a rejection of The Knife Slipped:
“I think it is cheap–crude, without being effective. All Bertha Cool does is talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people. And I don’t think much of the story itself. If that manuscript had come to me in the ordinary way, having no idea who the author was, I would have stopped reading about page 70 and the the book would have been rejected without even any hope on my part that the author would ever write a really good story.” (Quotes can be found in Secrets of the Worlds best-Selling Wirter: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner by Francis L. and Roberta B. Fugate, Morrow, 1980; p. 203).
What Hobson objected to back in 1939–Bertha Cool’s swearing and hard-boiled demeanor–seems normal now. And, Hobson misses the fact that Bertha Cool solves the mystery in The Knife Slipped. The Knife Slipped is a lot more like a Nero Wolfe mystery: Donald Lam gathers the clues and Bertha Cool solves the case. I enjoyed The Knife Slipped. I’m glad HARD CASE CRIME finally published it.
And as a bonus, that’s NOT Bertha on the cover.
Jerry, you’re right. Not Bertha Cool but Dita von Teese graces the cover of THE KNIFE SLIPPED. Robert McGinnis did a very nice job painting her!
I liked this one a lot, better than the other Cool & Lam books I’ve read, in fact.
Bill, Erle Stanley Gardner made Bertha Cool more like Nero Wolfe in THE KNIFE SLIPPED. While Donald Lam was getting beaten up and falling in love, Bertha coolly solves the case. I’m with you, THE KNIFE SLIPPED is very good.
I’m not a fan of Erle Stanley Gardner/A.A. Fair but you made this one sound interesting.
I’ll watch for it.
Beth, THE KNIFE SLIPPED is different from the Perry Mason books. Donald Lam narrates it in the First Person and the plot is clever. It resembles a Nero Wolfe mystery in style.
This one is on my list. I always think of Ellen Nehr as the perfect embodiment of Bertha Cool.
Jeff, if I had been casting a Donald Lam/Bertha Cool TV show or movie in the 1980s, Ellen Nehr would have been perfect casting!
I’ll stick with Perry, Paul and Della.
Rick, the Donald Lam/Bertha Cool mysteries have the same twisty plots as the Perry Mason series. I enjoy them both.
Sounds interesting and a bit ahead of it’s time for mainstream publishing. If I run across a cheap copy, I’ll get it and put it in the TBR shelves.
Since I’m still sorting books, I’ve taken to put books by authors together, and when all the books are accounted for, will see about the duplicates. The book I have the most copies of (2 each hb and pb) is Landscape with Dean Dons by Robt Richardson IIRC. I did read it years/decades ago and remember laughing out loud many times. I’ll give it another go (maybe celebrate the innauguration of the cheeto and read it or PGW that day).
Maggie, you would enjoy THE KNIFE SLIPPED. It’s a quick read. You’re right: THE KNIFE SLIPPED was ahead of its time (1939) so that was one reason William Morrow rejected it.
I’ve read so many thrillers when I was younger – but now I feel no longer interested, many are just too formulaic …
I probably told this story already:
An elderly relative of mine (prof in Munich) used to read a paperback every evening – and then put them in a box, so when I visited once or twice a year I had enough books to take home …
And there was the other friend of my parents who had all the British mysteries, Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace and others.
Perry Mason I remember from the TV series – those were the first impressions we got of the USA!
PS: If you google Dita von Teese you find lots of nice pictures – enough to decorate a whole year of George’s posts … 🙂
Wolf, Dita von Teese is a hot commodity in the photo market!