Book excerpt: From Perry Mason-creator Erle Stanley Gardner comes a lost classic of detective fiction featuring private eyes Donald Lam (once played by Frank Sinatra!) and Bertha Cool. Cool & Lam are back, in the case Raymond Chandler called "about the best of the series since the first two...perhaps since the very first." Hired to prevent a poisoning that hasn't happened yet, Donald Lam tries playing mind games with a prospective killer, only to wind up with two poisonings to solve – and two dangerous femme fatales, not to mention an adulterous dentist, a questionable real estate scheme, and a scientific system for betting the horses that someone might kill to keep secret...