"Fry me for an oyster! It's 1942. A war is on, so Donald Lam, the younger half of the Cool and Lam Confidential Investigation Agency, has joined the navy. But Bertha Cool, the fifty-year-old female half, decides to keep their Los Angeles office open. One of her first customers is a blind man, whom Bertha pays more attention to after he extracts the huge roll of bills from his money belt. Some of those bills can be hers, if she'll help him find a girl hit by a car in front of the spot where he sits to sell neckties. This girl, Bertha Cool soon learns, worked for rich, eccentric Harlow Milders, who has just died under very fishy circumstances. With each step she takes, Bertha gets more entangled. But her problems are just beginning: she still hasn't met Freddy, the blind man's pet bat. Freddy plays his part, too, in this crackling good mystery..." --