SHILLS CAN'T CASH CHIPS

Hard Case exhumes a tale of Bertha Cool, Donald Lam, and a dizzyingly complicated insurance scam originally published under the name A.A. Fair in 1961.

Bertha couldn’t be happier that Cool & Lam is finally getting work from a high-profile client like Lamont Hawley, who heads the claims department at Consolidated Interinsurance. Well-insured real estate sharpshooter Carter J. Holgate, one of his clients, recently plowed into the rear of a stopped car driven by divorcée Vivian Deshler, who claims to have suffered whiplash. Consolidated wants to know more about the claimant but can’t get close to her, and they think Donald, whose history of charming lovely ladies is well attested (as in books like 1940’s Turn on the Heat), will have better luck than their own investigators. The job is suspiciously easy. Donald, posing as the world’s most polite ex-con and a witness to the accident, succeeds in getting within snuggling distance of Vivian, her friend and neighbor Doris Ashley, and Holgate’s secretary, Lorraine Robbins. He can’t help wondering why everyone involved is so eager to prompt, accept, record, and reward his obviously false testimony when it’s only going to put Holgate and Consolidated on the hook for what feels more and more like a bogus claim. When a corpse turns up in the trunk of the car Donald drives for the agency, the police have quite a few questions of their own, and what seemed like a simple scam turns out to have more layers and a more pungent fragrance than a month-old onion.

A high-spirited romp you’ll be sorry to see end.