The Bigger They Come centers on disgraced former lawyer Donald Lam, who applies for a position at the Cool Detective Agency, headed by the steely Bertha Cool. Sensing something unique in the young man, she assigns him the task of serving divorce papers to an elusive gambler named Morgan Birks. Lam resolves to find Birks, and plunges almost at once into a farrago of flirtations, fist fights, and domestic spats in dingy hotels. Gardner delights in subverting the tropes of the hardboiled detective novel, but the real joy of this book is Bertha Cool, a formidably feisty woman with a knack for creative oaths. Breezily written and breathlessly paced, this first book in the Cool and Lam series is remarkably readable and entertaining.