When Top Of The Heap was released by Corgi in paperback in the United Kingdom in 1958 (below) it featured an Oliver Brabbins’ cover, which had a slightly seedy, big city feel to it. Like most McGinnis covers it had little to do with the story – gold rather than gambling was the principal element of the book, although there was a scene in a casino, but sans gloves. She is obviously supposed to be very classy, given the generous display of shining jewelry and the longest pair of opera gloves I have ever seen on a cover! She also has a very long cigarette holder! It is a very attractive cover and probably less formulaic than the covers that McGinnis did in the 1960s. The original Dell cover (1952) is at the top of this Post and is a very nice, almost classic, cover by Robert McGinnis featuring an attractive woman blowing smoke behind a roulette wheel and a pile of money. It was fortunate enough to attract some very nice covers, including two very different Robert McGinnis covers, which is a little unusual. Like most of the Lam and Cool books, and for that matter the Perry Masons too, Top Of The Heap was reprinted several times in the United States and England, usually with different covers. The central mystery was quite good and the ending the usual breathless rush! Top Of The Heap is relatively early book in the series and when I re-read it last year it had held up quite well, especially the banter between Lam and his boss, later his partner, at the private eye firm he worked in, Bertha Cool. They had a more hectic pace, especially towards the end of each book, and Donald Lam was a dodgier character than Mason, which appealed to me when I first encountered them as a teenager.

Fair pseudonym, to Erle Stanley Gardner’s more popular Perry Mason stories. I always preferred the Lam and Cool crime novels, written under theĪ.

Top of The Heap by A.A. Fair