Turn on the Heat

Meet the brash and irresistible Bertha Cool and Donald Lam—the iconic detective duo who stars in this classic crime novel from the creator of Perry Mason.

Hired by a mysterious “Mr. Smith” to find a woman who vanished 21 years earlier, Donald Lam finds himself facing a sadistic cop, a desperate showgirl, a duplicitous client, and one very dogged (and beautiful) newspaper reporter. Meanwhile, Bertha Cool’s attempts to cut herself in on this lucrative opportunity land them both hip-deep in murder . . .

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 the first new Cool and Lam novel in decades, The Knife Slipped, lost for 77 years after Gardner’s publisher refused it. Now, we’re bringing you the book Gardner wrote to replace it, often considered the best in the series: Turn on the Heat.