At last, Alfie Woodby was dead. Married off by her parents at 19 to a man she didn't love, Lola Woodby the rather merry widow, would finally be free to spend the dearly departed's fortune. Unfortunately Lola found out too quickly that Alfie didn't have a penny to his name. Worse, he had huge debts. At the funeral, Lola sees a bevy of Alfie's floozies who had come to pay their respects, among those a trollop with bright red hair, conveniently named Ruby. Ruby catches up with Lola as the latter is driving away from the cemetery, and makes her a proposition. Ruby needs something and asks Lola to get it for her for $3000. Lola cannot afford to say no as she has been booted out of her home and is left with only her cook, Berta, mostly because Berta hasn't seen any wages in months. And so begin the adventures of Lola Woodby.
COME HELL OR HIGHBALL is a screwball comedy of a book! Lola is a true original and a society matron, but as she gets herself into amateur sleuthing, she finds out that it's more complicated than the detective novels she used to read. Lola and her somewhat faithful Berta get themselves up to their eyeballs -- and highballs! -- in all sorts of crazy hijinks until the bodies start piling up and real danger rears its ugly head.
COME HELL OR HIGHBALL is fast-paced and filled with eccentric characters, vividly described by Ms. Chance. It's as good as time-travelling back to 1923. Ms. Chance has a solid grasp of the idioms and vocabulary of the times, which makes Lola's story come to life. The author paints such a clear picture of the dΓ©cor and the clothing, and captures the Roaring 20s so well, I imagined Rudolf Valentino and Jean Harlow were right in the story! What surprised me most is that amongst all those shenanigans, there is a solid mystery in COME HELL OR HIGHBALL, and I never guessed who the bad guy was! COME HELL OR HIGHBALL is pure entertainment from beginning to end!
30-year-old society matron Lola Woodby has survived her
loveless marriage with an unholy mixture of highballs,
detective novels, and chocolate layer cake, until, her
husband dies suddenly, leaving her his fortune...or so Lola
thought. As it turns out, all she inherits from Alfie is a
big pile of debt. Pretty soon, Lola and her stalwart Swedish
cook, Berta, are reduced to hiding out in the secret love
nest Alfie kept in New York City.
But when rent comes due, Lola and Berta have no choice but
to accept an offer made by one of Alfie's girls-on-the-side:
in exchange for a handsome sum of money, the girl wants Lola
to retrieve a mysterious reel of film for her. It sounds
like an easy enough way to earn the rent money. But Lola and
Berta realize they're in way over their heads when, before
they can retrieve it, the man currently in possession of the
film reel is murdered, and the reel disappears. On a quest
to retrieve the reel and solve the murder before the killer
comes after them next, Lola and Berta find themselves
navigating one wacky situation after another in high style
and low company.
Charming, witty, often laugh-out-loud funny, Maia Chance's
Come Hell or Highball introduces a sparkling new voice in
crime fiction.
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