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Top of the Heap

By Erle Stanley Gardner
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Brief Description
From Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner—during his life, the best-selling American author of all time—comes a lost classic of detective fiction featuring private eyes Donald Lam (once played by Frank Sinatra!) and Bertha Cool. Top of the Heap poses the question: SHE PLAYED THE ODDS... Read More
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From Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner - during his life, the best-selling American author of all time - comes a lost classic of detective fiction featuring private eyes Donald Lam (once played by Frank Sinatra!) and Bertha Cool.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description
From Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner—during his life, the best-selling American author of all time—comes a lost classic of detective fiction featuring private eyes Donald Lam (once played by Frank Sinatra!) and Bertha Cool.

Top of the Heap poses the question: SHE PLAYED THE ODDS – AND LOST!

When the beautiful girlfriend of a notorious gangster vanishes, the last man to be seen with her needs an alibi—and fast. Enter Donald Lam of the Cool & Lam detective agency. Donald tracks down the two women with whom his client claims to have spent the night and the client declares the case closed.

But it’s not. Something about his client’s story doesn’t add up, and Donald can’t resist the temptation to keep digging. Before he knows it, he’s dug up connections to a mining scam, an illegal casino, and a double homicide—plus an opportunity for an enterprising private eye to make a small fortune, if he can just stay alive long enough to cash in on it!

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781835411803

Publisher: Titan Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 08 July 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Hard Case Crime

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 240

Collections

Crime & Thriller Erle Stanley Gardner Fiction General Fiction

About the Author

One of the best-selling authors of all time, Erle Stanley Gardner’s greatest creations include crusading attorney Perry Mason (star of more than eighty novels, a TV series and TV movies) and the hardboiled detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, who appeared in more than two dozen adventures. An attorney himself, Gardner also founded the Court of Last Resort, a group that investigated criminal cases they believed had ended in wrong convictions.

Also by Erle Stanley Gardner

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  • Fools Die On Friday
    About the best of the series... perhaps since the very first. — Raymond Chandler Private investigators Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, stars of five of Hard Case Crime’s most popular novels, return to solve their toughest case yet. Hired to prevent a socialite from poisoning her husband, Donald Lam dreams up an ingenious scheme involving a carton of anchovy paste...
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  • The Knife Slipped
    At the time of his death, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American author of the 20th century, and world famous as the creator of crusading attorney Perry Mason. Gardner also created the hardboiled detective team of Cool and Lam, stars of 29 novels published between 1939 and 1970—and one that’s never been published until now. Lost for more than...
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  • Turn on the Heat
    Erle Stanley Gardner was not just the creator of Perry Mason; at the time of his death, he was the best-selling American author of all time, with hundreds of millions of books in print. Among those books were the 29 cases of the brash, irresistible detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Last year, Hard Case Crime brought out...
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  • The Bigger They Come
    Bertha Cool is the gruff, tough-talking, corpulent head of her private detective agency, opened after the death of her husband. Donald Lam is her meek, slight, and nervy new hire who makes up for a lack of boldness with brilliant deductive work. The duo couldn't be any more dissimilar, but with their skills combined, they are an unstoppable force when...
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  • The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe
    Sleuthing attorney Perry Mason can't resist a good mystery, so when he sees an older woman being accused of shoplifting during a department store outing with his assistant, Della Street, he doesn't hesitate to intervene. Armed with an assumption of innocence and the legal acumen to silence her accuser, Mason leaps to the woman's defence—until her niece appears, acknowledging her...
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  • The Bigger They Come
    Bertha Cool is the gruff, tough-talking, corpulent head of her private detective agency, opened after the death of her husband. Donald Lam is her meek, slight, and nervy new hire, who makes up for a lack of boldness with brilliant deductive work. The duo couldn't be any more dissimilar but, with their skills combined, they are an unstoppable force when...
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