From left to right: Sugar Maple, Sylvie Bell, Art Vance, Rob, Diane Kimura, Walter Tooey, Goldie, and Cheryl Labeaux.
Goldie Vance is a comic book series written by Hope Larson and Jackie Ball, illustrated by Brittney Williams, Noah Hayes, and Elle Power, and published by Boom! Studios.
The titular Marigold "Goldie" Vance is a 16 year-old “assistant” Kid Detective, serving at her father’s hotel the Crossed Palms Resort in St. Pascal, Florida. Using her sleuthing skills, talent for disguises, spunky kid charm, and network of clever and reliable friends, Goldie tackles all sorts of cases that come to the hotel, whether Russian spies looking to steal spacecraft secrets, to missing ex-astronauts with a grudge, or an allegedly haunted music festival.
The series has been published in 20 comic book issuesnote , and two prose novels by Lilliam Rivera. A movie adaptation of the series
is being developed by Kerry Washington and Rashida Jones.
Tropes:
- Amicable Exes: The Hotel Whodunit explains that Goldie's parents separated because they figured out they were better friends than spouses.
- Batman Gambit: Goldie's plan in Volume 4 to lure Soviets out in the open revolves around feeding their overconfidence, including her and her friends faking public spats so that the spies will think Goldie's all by herself.
- Big Brother Bully: Red Donahue, Sugar Maple's older sister. They have a testy relationship, which comes to a head in the third arc where Red sabotages Sugar's races.
- Dirty Communists: KGB spies are recurring villains in the series, particularly in the first and fourth arcs.
- Enemy Mine: The fourth arc ends with a Sequel Hook of Miss Petty in jail meeting Red Donahue and scheming a plan of revenge against Goldie.
- Engineered Public Confession: In Volume 4, Goldie lures Miss Petty into the music festival's sound testing room, letting Cheryl record her Just Between You and Me about causing the blackouts.
- Evil Gloating: When Goldie is cornered by two Russian spies in Volume 4, one of them can’t resist bragging to her about their nefarious plan for St. Pascal... until his partner elbows him harshly to shut him up.
- Failed a Spot Check: Twice in Volume 4.
- Goldie's initial jealousy of Diane getting chummy with Chris causes her to start accumulating evidence that Chris is the music festival's saboteur, thus wasting time in spotting the real culprit, Miss Petty.
- The festival is discovered to be rigged with transmitter tapes sending out a high frequency signal. Goldie's friends steal one, in sight of Miss Petty, but Goldie and Diane realize Petty's lack of reaction means there must be a second tape they failed to find.
- Green-Eyed Monster: In the fourth arc, Goldie fears that Diane is getting too friendly with her old flame Chris. Goldie develops a bias that leads to her accumulating “proof” that Chris is the music festival’s saboteur, but then is shown how mistaken it all is and is lectured at length about how badly she betrayed her friends’ trust.
- Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Goldie may be the hotel’s best detective, but her actual position is a valet. Technically she’s the unofficial assistant to the hotel’s actual detective Walter Tooey, who barely tolerates her help despite her being far more capable than he is.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: When learning that music records of the Peanut Butter Boys' latest single has been causing power outages, Goldie suspects that they may really be crooks... until she meets them and finds them so bubbly sweet she concedes they've probably never told a lie in their lives.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Averted, weirdly enough, given the setting. Diane, an Asian-American woman, and Goldie, a biracial woman, are able to date without any comments on the matter.
- Medium Blending: The Hotel Whodunit is mostly a prose novel, but two sequences in the book are depicted in comics form.
- Mineral MacGuffin: In the first arc, Goldie's mission is to find a missing diamond locket. However, the gem turns out to be just a worthless imitation. The real prize is the formula written on the locket for a revolutionary rocket fuel.
- Most Definitely Not a Villain: Two Soviet spies disguise themselves as Americans during the St. Pascal music festival. One of them tries way too hard at it, offering random people "free American gum", dangling kitchy US symbol souvenirs on his keys, and his office having an enormous American flag he makes sure is visible through the window.
- Non-Indicative Name: Chris Villain (pronounced Vill-enne), a French music distributor. Goldie initially assumes her to be a suspect in her case in Volume 4 (and the name doesn't help), but Chris turns out to be a gracious and resourceful ally.
- Politically Correct History: The series appears to take place in an alternate version of 60s America where racism, sexism, and homophobia are seemingly nonexistent. For instance, Goldie is able to openly pursue a relationship with her girlfriend Diane, with absolutely no stigma from the interracial and sapphic aspects of it from witnesses.
- Prequel: The Hotel Whodunit is set before the events of the comic series, as evidenced by Goldie not dating Diane yet and not owning a car.
- The Rival: Sugar Maple, the daughter of their hotel's chain owner. She and Goldie used to be friends when they were little, but afterward grew very competitive and thus constantly try to one-up each other. In Issue #12 they finally bury the hatchet, with Goldie uncovering Sugar's saboteur and Sugar therefore gifting Goldie her car in thanks.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Soviet spy Miss Petty gets the better of Walter this way in the first arc, pretending to be a distressed guest locked out of her hotel room in only her underwear, so she can get close enough to seemingly thank him with a date and then drug and rob him.
