A. A. FAIR – KEPT WOMEN CAN’T QUIT by Erle Stanley Gardner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

What a mess of convoluted actions in a simplistic tale. Seems to me Gardner took the Perry Mason mysteries that involved a lot more of a shell game than many Mason stories and recreated those as Cool and Lam books. Replacing Mason with Lam.

This story starts simply enough. Then within 30 pages a ridiculously shell game of various items and people by Lam leaving the reader wondering what is going on. Turns out – Not much. For the actions set up to law enforcement activity that again brings up this weird canard of Sergeant Sellers always believing Lam is a bad guy that is capable of murder, extortion and crimes against the world. OK, maybe Sellers could be written this way a few times. Writing Sellers like this everytime is just sloppy storytelling. All of this to pad this book with frivolous fluff that is a waste of writing and reading.

There is more bobbing and weaving involving Lam, but at that point it all points to more waste of writing, which is was. There is an interesting angle of the weapon used that could have been a great plot point. Instead Gardner takes a wild tangent involving a retail store/manufacturers/models/ etc. More waste. This could have been a good mystery without the unnecessary mess.

Main characters are mostly assumed to be known and the rest are well described. The females maybe over well described. In that Lam is never well described for the most part, he sure has a way with any well formed dish, if I might use Gardner vernacular. Settings are written sparsely.

Originally, when i started the book, i thought Gardner’s foreword was going to be my biggest complaint. The foreword is odd in that it has NOTHING to do with the book. Worse is Gardner’s questioning whether we should be jailing those who break the law. Lone rehabilitation is the answer. What a cockeyed view by a writer that is always sending his characters to jail.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book. 4 out of 10 points.

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