by P. G. Wodehouse

 Ronald Psmith (“the ‘p’ is silent, as in pshrimp”) is always willing to help a damsel in distress. So when he sees Eve Halliday without an umbrella during a downpour, he nobly offers her an umbrella, even though it’s one he picks out of the Drone Club’s umbrella rack. Psmith is so besotted with Eve that, when Lord Emsworth, her new boss, mistakes him for Ralston McTodd, a poet, Psmith pretends to be him so he can make his way to Blandings Castle and woo her. And so the farce begins: criminals disguised as poets with a plan to steal a priceless diamond necklace, a secretary who throws flower pots through windows, and a nighttime heist that ends in gunplay.

Review

Everyone can remember where they were when they read their first Wodehouse – it’s up there along with your first kiss, where you were when you heard John Lennon was dead or the first time you spelled “occurred” without checking it out. I was twelve, in bed with flu, and my father brought me a bottle of Lucozade, and a couple of books he’d found in a jumble sale – Georgette Heyer’s “Black Sheep” and “Leave It to Psmith”.

I’d never before come across a book where the words weren’t used as simple building blocks: all the books I’d read till then marched briskly from A to B, no loitering, no funny stuff in the back row. “The Mountain of Adventure” would have had no truck with an opening sentence like:- (more…)