I got an advanced copy of Maia Chance’s Come Hell or Highball through Netgalley and found it a silly good time. Set in the early 1920’s, this novel is the first in a series (or so I predict) and is the origin story of Lola Woodby, Private Investigator.
As the novel begins, Lola Woodby is a newly widowed society dame, about to find out many unpleasant things about her husband, Alfie. Lola already knew he was a gambler, a drinker, and a womanizer, but what she didn’t know and finds out in the opening chapters is that he has left her not just penniless but deep in debt. Lola arrives home from the funeral to find Alfie’s insufferable brother, Chisholm, already making himself at home in her house and getting ready to toss her out in the street. The family lawyer sadly informs her that Chisholm is perfectly in the rights to evict her and that her other residence, a Park Avenue apartment, must be sold immediately to pay off her husband’s debts.
Luckily, Lola knows her husband kept another place, a love nest, off the books, and she sets off to stay there, accompanied by her Pomeranian, Cedric, and her Swedish cook, Berta Lundgren, who insists on coming with her. Though Lola came from humble origins in the Midwest, she has become used to the high life and wonders how she will support herself, let alone her dog and cook. How Lola stumbles onto a possible money making task and where this job takes her (and Berta) involves movie producers, starlets, gangsters, and a handsome PI named Ralph Oliver. It also involves a lot of 1920’s dialogue with phrases like “oodles of bucks” and “scrummy gathering” and “absolutely the elephant’s elbow.”
Though worlds and years away from Stephanie Plum’s New Jersey, this novel has the same feel. There is much made of Lola’s full-figure and love of chocolate and a stiff drink but Lola is also a smart observer of the world around her. She was pushed into marriage by her family at 19 and though her husband’s death upends her world, it also offers her a new form of freedom—if she can stay alive long enough to enjoy it. There is lots of witty banter here and the relationship between Berta and Lola is worth the price of admission. Sometimes, Chance seems to be trying just a bit too hard, but overall, this novel had a good mix of humor, high jinks, and highballs.
