Series
Publication
Original publication date
Collections
Genres
Subjects
Description
Bertha Cool is the gruff, tough-talking, corpulent head of her private detective agency, opened after the death of her husband; Donald Lam is her meek, slight, and nervy new hire, who makes up for a lack of boldness with brilliant deductive work. The duo couldn't be any more dissimilar but, with their skills combined, they are an unstoppable force when it comes to solving crimes, as evidenced by their over two dozen successes in the long-running series penned by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner.In this, their first outing, Donald Lam is tasked with delivering divorce papers to a man who reportedly made a fortune in rigged slot machines. The only problem is that nobody--not even the police--can find him. Before long, Lam's seemingly-simple assignment finds him caught up in a web of money, mysterious safety deposit boxes, and a gang of toughs every bit as desperate as he is to find the runaway husband. Reissued for the first time in decades, and originally published under the A.A. Fair pen name, The Bigger They Come is an enjoyable private eye novel replete with puzzling scenarios and a humorous tone. As fast and twisty as anything Gardner ever wrote, the novel (and the series it spawned) is more Paul Drake than Perry Mason, but it is sure to please any fan of the Golden Age whodunnit. Includes discussion guide questions for use in book clubs.… (more)
User reviews
This one is perhaps a bit lighter in tone than later books in the series and, for those of us who didn't start reading at the beginning of the series, it's real interesting to see how the characters started out and what they later became.
Here, Lam is very young, green, wet behind the ears, and not at all sure of himself either as a detective or with women. His background as a disbarred lawyer is emphasized and this one is resolved in a Perry Mason like legal way which makes you wonder if Gardner's original intent was to sort of repeat the success he had with the Perry Mason series just in a different setting. Perhaps the fact Gardner published this under the pseudonym AA Fair is a hint as to what his intentions were.
In later books in the series, Lam has a real confidence about him and his abilities and even Bertha realizes that he's the real detective of the two. This is not the best of the series, but it's an enjoyable read. It's unfortunate that most of this series is not available in e-book format yet as a little effort and perhaps a library Card is needed to find some of the volumes in this series.
The plot picked up about 3/4 of the way through, but until then it all seemed like set-up. Not thrilled, and probably won't seek out the next one.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
The first Cool and Lam mystery! The strength of this story is the relationship and chemistry between the two characters! Cool is the boss, a large lady with a sharp tongue and
And this story was just that, for a time. But from page 179 on, the story was confusing. Lam goes to AZ, for reasons to be explained later, but in the course of the story, it was just a bunch of nonsense. I actually began to wonder if I had missed that an entirely different story had been added to this book. Like I said, it does become connected to the whole plotline, but I felt like it was totally unnecessary. And yes, I now understand why Lam did all of that nonsense, I just didn't enjoy reading about it. However, I will give this duo another try, as I think their relationship has a good deal of potential for further stories.