Shills can't cash chips

By Erle Stanley Gardner

Subjects:

Description: Two unrelated Cool & Lam cases bound together in one book, in reverse chronological order. **Cool & Lam Mystery #22** -- Shills Can't Cash Chips (1961) Vivian Deshler is claiming whiplash after her car was rear-ended. There's no doubt that Carter Holgate is at fault, but his insurance carrier suspects the whiplash claim is fraudulent. Thing is, Vivian Deshler has disappeared. Her best friend, Doris Ashley, may know something, but the insurance carrier's internal investigators haven't been able to get anywhere with her. And they've had an anonymous warning that pursuing the investigation could be dangerous. So, naturally, Bertha Cool puts Donald Lam on the case. **Cool & Lam Mystery # 12** -- Bedrooms Have Windows (1949) When the hotel cocktail lounge refuses entry to gorgeous--but unescorted--Lucille Hart, Donald Lam gallantly steps in. Seems like a harmless bit of fun, and the tailing job that brought him to the hotel is mostly wrapped up. But the evening gets progressively stranger, and an innocent pick-up begins to smell like a set-up. By the time Donald and his "date" pull in at the Kozy Dell Slumber Court, in a car registered to someone named Dover Fulton, Donald is dead sure it's a set-up. Almost as dead as the Kozy Dell murder-suicide pair that make the morning paper, the male half of which is none other than Dover Fulton. Somehow, tailing job, hotel pick-up, and his-and-hers corpses are all part of the same unholy mess, with Donald Lam front and center. But how? And *why*?