Bertha Cool

Bertha Cool is a fictional American detective created by Erle Stanley Gardner under his penname "A. A. Fair." Overweight (275 pounds) and in her 60s, Cool opened her own detective agency in 1936 after her husband Henry died. In the first book about her, The Bigger They Come (1939; British: Lam to the Slaughter), she hired Donald Lam, a disbarred lawyer only 5' 6" tall (125 pounds), and the duo appeared in more than two dozen books.