A quick plug. Mr Suit (US $3.79) is now down to the price of £2.99 for the paperback. Here's the link.
Now, far more importanlty, here are some thoughts on Mulliner Nights.
Here’s a book that glitters. It sparkles with humour and the quality of writing and the pure pleasure that comes across in the telling of this collection of tales.
Mulliner hangs about in The Angler’s Rest chewing the fat, only there is no fat in the book, rather it’s all lean meat.
Whatever the subject, Mulliner can relate a tale of one of his relatives who has experienced something similar.
There are common threads that possibly relate to the gene pool: the wooing of a ladies, sturdy butlers, gentry, a slightly dizzying ineptitude, swirling messes and genius solutions.
As the blurb says, there are a range of subjects covered. Each of them seems rather implausible, but as soon as the tales begin they live and breathe like the best of them.
Reading these stories is as close to pure joy as you’ll find in a book.
The humour drips from the situations and the characters so that I doubt there are many who could read them with a straight face or, indeed, without blurting out the odd titter. Wodehouse can bring a smile simply through his choice of a name.
The sharp wit and repartee is ever present.
The simile is raised to the level of art.
What is particularly pleasing is the way it feels like the author could sit at a typewriter all day, day after day, and produce page after page of the most perfect prose as easily as he might breathe or eat strawberries.
If there are faults in this one, I can’t find them and I don’t really care. Spot them and please don’t bother to point them out to this reviewer as I would rather keep the memory of pure pleasure with me for as long as I can.
Chapter 8. Strychnine In The Soup.
Mulliner Nights Kindle (US)
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