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When a representative from an insurance firm appears at the offices of Cool and Lam, it sounds like just the kind of case they need, or specifically, the kind of case that is music to the ears of Bertha Cool. An insurance company is offering a large fee for investigating a traffic accident. It looks like a nice, quiet and respectable job, unlike the other sordid cases that her detective Donald Lam usually manages to unearth. An easy case is fine with Donald Lam as well, although he suspects there might be more to this investigation that looking into a potentially fraudulent whiplash claim that could easily be dealt with by the firm's own detectives. So why do they need Cool and Lam? Well, there is clearly an element of unspecified danger, but it also seems that they want Lam for more than just his investigative talents. There is an attractive woman involved and they need someone with the charm to get in close to her, and Donald Lam is just the man for the job. I'm guessing that...

Famous for his Perry Mason series, Erle Stanley Gardner also wrote the entertaining Cool and Lam Private Investigation team series under the name A.A. Fair. I say PI team, but essentially most of the work is done by 'pint size' Private Detective Donald Lam, while the business side of the arrangement is taken care of in the rather larger shape of Bertha Cool. Bertha has a tendency to explosive outbursts at the unconventional way Lam operates and is always trying to improve the reputation and class of clientele of the agency, but although it's an arrangement that generally works surprisingly well, this familiar/repetitive operation is certainly put to the test in The Count of 9 . Bertha has landed a nice little engagement with a wealthy socialite and is making the most of the promotion and status such a commission will bring. Dean Crockett the Second has hired Cool and Lam to look over the guests invited to the party at his penthouse apartment to make sure nothing gets stole...

Neil Jordan often writes with a supernatural element behind his stories, but there is usually another kind of intangible elusive mystery that pervades his writing; his characters trying to grasp with vagaries of memory, regret and loss, hoping for some kind of redemption. Like The Drowned Detective , music plays a part in The Well of Saint Nobody , something that remains elusive yet seductive and powerful, and it too can represent other desires or carry feelings of regret. William Burrows has a love/hate relationship with music. A once famous pianist who was celebrated in his day, William is now unable to play the piano, suffering from psoriatic arthritis, the skin peeling from his once nimble fingers. He comes to a small village in Cork, where he soon finds the need to engage a housekeeper for all the work that would find it difficult to do for himself in his current condition. Tara answers his ad in the local shop, Burrows not realising that the woman he has engaged knows him from se...

The appearance of Voices of the Dead is a welcome addition to Ambrose Parry's Edinburgh Victorian period medical crime drama series (now collectively known as the Raven and Fisher mysteries, extending it successfully beyond the first three excellent books. There is no shortage of period crime thriller series, but there is obviously something special about this one in the way that it makes use of historical progress and development in science and medicine around this period that contributes to its unique perspective. All the more so since Edinburgh and Dr. Simpson are at the centre of those important advances; advances that not only benefit the general public - and even Queen Victoria, who helped give legitimacy to the use of chloroform to ease the burden of childbirth - but those advances also contribute to the investigation of crime. Medicine and crime are a good match, but it also means a good match in the husband and wife team of Christopher Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, who ...

At the end of Book I. Conquête de l'Est the two groups of wandering musicians had come together in Odessa and been immediately engaged by an elderly lady for a birthday party. Despite being initially introduced to the Baron of Backside in Book I, the first person narrative and perspective of Yaacov takes prominence in Book II of Klezmer . The 15-year-old boy is wildly attracted to Hava, and a shared bathing interlude to the all-night party that takes up most of the second volume brings out all the sensuality in Sfar's artwork. There's less of the adventure story that introduced each of the characters in Book I, but there is still a wonderful variety of moods and tones that is reflected in the artwork in Bon anniversaire Scylla ; a warmth and humanity that also seems to be part of the intent of the artist, and it's one that is doubtlessly inspired by love of the Klezmer music. It also adheres to Sfar's way of using the musical theme as a liberating and unifying forc...

I read and wrote a brief review of the first part of Joann Sfar's Klezmer in 2008 - a scarily long time ago now that I go back to look for it - when it was published in English translation by FirstSecond. I remember the thrill of seeing the artist's remarkable facility for colour and fluidity bringing a unique story to life. Despite French editions of the series being available, I somehow never got around to picking them up, hoping that FirstSecond would get around to translating subsequent volumes and presenting them in what I thought at the time were better quality editions. Well, it's taken 15 years but I've finally given up on the idea of seeing the subsequent volumes translated, and I've changed my mind about the presentation. Or at least, as far as reading the first two volumes of the series now. I've promised myself I will not take as long getting around to finish reading the series in the original French. Klezmer, for those who don't know - and I...