The Bigger They Come is a 1939 detective novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, originally written under the pen name "A.A. Fair."
It was written under a pen name because it isn't part of Gardner's famous Perry Mason series. In fact, it is the first of thirty novels in Gardner's "Cool and Lam" series about private detectives. The story opens with Donald Lam, a former lawyer who has ceased practicing after his license was suspended. Lam is literally down to his last dime and hasn't eaten in 24 hours, when he responds to a Help Wanted ad. The ad was placed by one Bertha Cool, a rotund woman (she is described as being over 200 pounds) who runs a detective agency. She offers Donald a job and Donald gratefully accepts.
Almost immediately, Cool and Lam get a case. The lovely Alma Hunter shows up at the agency on behalf of her equally lovely friend, Sandra Birks. Sandra is trying to divorce her husband, Morgan Birks, but can't find him to serve divorce papers. She can't find him because Morgan, who was involved in an illegal slot machine racket, is in hiding both from the cops and from his angry partners who want the money he stole. Cool and Lam—or specifically Lam, since Bertha never does any leg work or really any detecting at all—are supposed to find Morgan Birks and deliver the subpoena.
Donald, acting off a tip by Sandra's brother B. Lee Thoms (aka "Bleatie") follows Morgan's mistress to the hotel where Morgan is hiding out, and succeeds in serving the subpoena. But when Morgan Birks is found murdered soon after, the case gets more complicated.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Cunweather the murderous gangster, who is cheerful and affable and friendly to Donald right up until he orders his mook to beat Donald up to make Donald tell what he knows. After Donald takes a beating, Cunweather has the mook give him some brandy and a new shirt, and offers Donald a job.
- Auto Erotica: Donald and Alma wind up making out in a car while staking out Sally Durke's apartment building.
- Blowing Smoke Rings: In his first meeting with Sandra Birks, Donald puts his feet up, lights a cigar, and blows smoke rings at the ceiling. Unlike most instances of this trope, it isn't a matter of a character being cool or trying to look cool, but rather Donald's sheer joy at having money and a job and no longer facing the prospect of starvation.
- Buxom Beauty Standard:
- As usual in pulp fiction detective stories. An admiring Donald notes that Alma "was slender around the waist, but had curves, and the dress showed the curves."
- Naturally the same is true of Sandra Birks, who greets Donald while wearing pajamas. Donald observes her "figure that pushed out at me through the silk of her pajamas."
- Chalk Outline: There's still a chalk outline on the floor of Alma's room, when Bertha and Donald return to evaluate the scene of the crime.
- Dies Wide Open: Donald finally makes his way into Alma's room and observes Morgan Birks's "glazed eyes reflecting the light of the ceiling" as Birks lays dead on the floor.
- Fat Bastard: Cunweather, the gangster boss who was Morgan Birks's boss in the slot machine racket. He is "a fat individual, with blubbery lips and cheeks." Later, Donald is grossed out when Cunweather undoes his pajama top and exposes his "huge, white, and flabby" belly, in order to remove the money belt he's wearing.
- Female Misogynist: Alma, being the Reactionary subtype. After hearing Bertha complain about the lengths that she, Bertha, went to in order to keep her husband happy, Alma says in her meek way that she doesn't like to "hear people talk cynically about marriage." She says that if a woman works hard enough at making the home happy, the man will want to be there all the time and won't cheat. After Bertha reacts to this with incredulous disgust, Alma says "But it's a woman's place in life. It's part of the biological structure."
- Foreshadowing: Donald explains to Bertha why he no longer practices law. He told a friend that he knew a loophole in California law that would allow one to literally get away with murder. Unfortunately for Donald, the friend turned out to be a low-level gangster who chose to interpret the story as an actual plan. Towards the end, Donald puts this plan into practice, besides the actual "commit a murder" part. It's a complicated scheme in which he arranges to have himself extradited from California to Arizona for grand theft auto, then falsely confesses to the Morgan Birks murder, only to walk free due to the weird loophole, which relates to California extradition law. He does this to get the authorities to take him seriously and get the real killers, namely Cunweather and his goons, arrested for Birks's murder.
- Girl of the Week: The Cool and Lam novels often featured Donald getting a love interest or hooking up with a girl. In this first one it's Alma Hunter, who is gorgeous, and also extremely feminine and submissive, and looks to Donald to protect her. The book ends with Donald saying goodbye to Bertha and going into a hotel room for sex with Alma. Alma would never appear again in the series, as would be the pattern for future Girls of the Week.
- Holding Both Sides of the Conversation: It's eventually revealed that Bleatie and Morgan are the same man. So the scene where Bleatie, locked in a hotel shared restroom, is screaming at Morgan in the next suite, was actually Morgan doing both voices for Donald's benefit.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: The formula for the series had Bertha, Donald's boss, never do any detecting. It was always Donald running around, not only doing the leg work, but making the crucial deductions.
- In the Back: Alma says that she shot Morgan Birks in self defense after he intruded into her room, so Donald is alarmed to find out that Morgan was shot in the back as he was headed for the door. (It's eventually revealed that she didn't shoot him.)
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Donald is very smart but is also a very small man, being short and weighing only 127 pounds, so he often gets beaten up by bad guys during the course of his investigations. In this one he takes a beating from Cunweather's mook Fred, while Cunweather demands that Donald tell where Morgan Birks is.
- Really Gets Around: Bleatie says his sister "can't be trusted around a man" and always has multiple men on the string. Given Bleatie's real identity this statement might not be trustworthy, but on the other hand Sandra does currently have both a husband and a boyfriend and also tries to seduce Donald.
- Samus Is a Girl: Donald answers the Help Wanted ad put out by B.L. Cool, asks at the office for "Mr. Cool", and is surprised to find out that his new employer is a (large) woman.
- Slouch of Villainy: Morgan Birks is laying on the bed in the hotel room when Donald makes his way in. All he's willing to do is raise himself up on one elbow, even as Donald serves the papers and even after Sandra, who has shown up at the hotel after Donald found Morgan, screams at her husband for shacking up with his mistress.
- Smithical Marriage: Discussed Trope, because it's 1939 and Donald notes that the more respectable hotels disapprove of unmarried couples meeting in rooms. So that's why Sally had to register at the hotel as Mrs. B.F. Morgan in order to meet Morgan Birks, and why Donald and Alma have to register as Mr. and Mrs. Donald Helforth in order to take the room next to Sally and Morgan's.
- Start to Corpse: The whole first half of the book involves Donald getting hired by Bertha, assigned to the Birks case, and tracking Morgan Birks down to serve him with divorce papers. It's past the halfway point when Morgan is killed and the book becomes a murder mystery.
- Tricked into Another Jurisdiction: An inversion. Donald puts into a motion a scheme where he is arrested in California on a complaint from Arizona. After he's extradited, he confesses to a murder in California. An attempt to extradite him back to California fails because he wasn't a fugitive from justice. He had not fled from the state; he was forcibly taken from the state against his will.
- Two Aliases, One Character: "Bleatie" and Morgan Birks are the same man. Everybody was in on it except for Alma. Sandra and Morgan plotted together for the Cool and Lam detective team to find Morgan and deliver the papers, so that they could get their divorce without Morgan having to show himself in public.
