BATS FLY AT DUSK by Fair, A. A. (Erle Stanley Gardner) - 1942

New York: Dell, 1942. Mass Market Paperback. Good Plus to Very Good. Vintage Paperback -- Dell 0476: This is the seventh novel in Erle Stanley Gardner's mystery/detective series featuring the private detective firm of Bertha Cool, a very stout, sixtyish woman whose focus is mainly on the money, and Donald Lam, who, at 5'6,'' uses his brains to squeeze out of tight spots and solve crimes. "Bats Fly At Dusk" set in the midst of WWII, sees Lam volunteer for the Navy, leaving Cool to hold the fort. Bertha takes the job of finding a young woman for a blind man with a pet bat. The blind man has never seen the girl but knows she has vanished. Finding her would be a difficult task but the blind man's money talked and Bertha always listened to money. But this time Bertha failed and found herself a murder suspect instead. Lam, hears about the case, gets a pass from the Navy and flies in to solve the case, then gets back to his Navy job, all without telling Bertha. Mass Market Paperback. First printing of Second Dell edition, Oct. 1972 (Originally issued in hardcover, by Morrow in 1942. About 4 1/8 x 7 inches, 192 pages in pictorial wrappers showing young woman in office setting with gun on desk in front of her on front cover. Covers and text are clean, complete and unmarked. Covers show minor surface and edgewear, reading creases but no significant damage such as tears, dogearred corners or chipping at spine ends. Many readers believe that this series, with only half the titles of Gardner's Perry Mason series, is, on the whole, better written than the Perry Masons.