Nothing like indulging in highballs, detective novels, and chocolate layer cake to cope with stress and a loveless marriage. I expected a romp and a light-hearted approach to detecting, however for me, the stereotyping of the characters was insensitive and downright passé. I didn't care much about the story but when you're stuck in an airport with flight delays... ( )

Lola Woodby finds herself in straitened circumstances when her husband dies. He leaves behind more debts than assets, and there's nothing left to support Lola's life of highballs, chocolates, and detective novels. Lola and her cook Bertha flee to the one place Lola can think of: her husband's secret love nest, which she accidentally learned about several years into her unhappy marriage. When Lola is approached by a chorus girl who wants her to retrieve a certain sensitive item from the home of one of Lola's high-society acquaintances, Lola's first impulse is to say no, but Bertha spots an opportunity for their future, establishing themselves as discreet lady detectives. When a murder takes place during the house party they're attending, though, will Lola and Bertha find themselves in too deep?

I loved the concept of a 1920's mystery featuring a down on her luck society lady, but this book just didn't hold my attention the way I had hoped. I also didn't care for how the mystery was resolved. I won't be continuing on with the series. ( )

Prohibition era; Lola's husband dies of a heart attack and she discovers he wasn't as rich as she'd thought. She and her cook Berta are without house and home, and while hiding out in her husband's heretofore unknown love nest in the city, agree to retrieve a film reel for one of her late husband's mistresses. Thus begins what is supposed to be a madcap and hilarious adventure into mystery and mayhem.

Eh. Either I was off my game or the book was. Nothing struck me as madcap so much as it did silly (and there's a subtle difference, in my opinion). Lola failed to elicit much sympathy from me, her mother was annoying in all the wrong ways, her brother in law unrealistically meddlesome (he kept trying to gaslight Lola) and Berta was sorta weird. The romantic tension that was supposed to exist between Ralph and Lola was absent. The mystery plot was all over the place; incredibly complicated, and hinged on unknown information until the very end.

Now that I've beaten the poor book to death, for all that it wasn't a bad read. It kept me entertained enough to keep reading, it just didn't hook me, or bond me to the characters in any way that will result in my desire to read any additional books in the series. Which is a shame, because I do love the Prohibition-era setting. ( )

This was an absolute delight, and a perfect bit of 1920s nostalgia. (Did New York really have that cheerful larger-than-life glitz? Probably not. Did I care? Not for an instant.) The mystery is great, in a madcap way that wouldn’t be out of place in a period short, but what really sells this is Lola and her fellow characters. She’s just so vivid, and a little screwy, and a joy of a narrator, and everyone else is just over-the-top enough to be funny without being unbelievable. That, and the 1920s stuff, which is everywhere in the best way, really sold this for me. I love Chance’s Fairy Tale Fatal series and want more of that for sure, but this series? I really wouldn’t mind more of this either.

8/10 ( )

THIS IS A BIG-ASS SPOILER AND I DO NOT CARE
DON'T BOTHER ME WITH YOUR WHINY COMPLAINTS

The faggot did it. For LUUUV of his pretty-boy movie star boyfriend, the studio guy killed them all.

This is the cheapest, crappiest thing for a 21st-century writer to pull that I can imagine. You know, it's the fact that it's part of The Big Reveal that pisses me off so much. Nothing makes me angrier than suddenly revealing the killer is, by the bye, queer...that's obviously part of his criminality and turpitude.

If it wasn't, it would've been dealt with all through the text.

Oh...and the beautiful man with the high-pitched voice being queer? Yeah...no. Not acceptable since like maybe 1945. ( )