Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

This is the fourteenth of the fifteen books primarily about Bertie Wooster and his man Jeeves. Others may argue with that number, since it includes several short-story collections that are mostly Jeeves but include other stories, and also includes the novel Ring for Jeeves, which does not feature Bertie. But it's about that many, and this is near the end but not the actual end. It was originally published in 1971, near the end of author P.G. Wodehouse's long life and career, and was known as Jeeves and the Tie That Binds Us in the US for its initial life.

The UK title was Much Obliged, Jeeves, under which title I first read it in the early '90s and under which title it appears these days.

It's shorter and slighter than the best of Wodehouse's work - he was ninety the year it was published, and so possibly slowing down just a bit - but just as funny and sprightly as he ever was, with a fine example of Bertie Wooster narration. (Though Bertie is possibly overusing the narrative tic of using a letter to stand in for a word here - a little of that can go a long way.)

Like all of the Bertie-and-Jeeves books, it's explicitly set in sequence, and starts off with references to the plot of 1963's Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, the prior book in the series. None of the plots are terribly dense or difficult to understand, but the recurring motifs and plot devices can be slightly confusing, I suppose. (Not many impostors in the Bertie stories - those are mostly at Blandings Castle. Bertie's troubles often start with aunts, though. He also ends up stealing, or being accused of stealing, various expensive objects a lot, and of course has a whole herd of young women who think he wants to marry them and will "allow" him to do so if not stopped. Also, everyone else in the book thinks Bertie is mentally feeble, which is not exactly correct but also not entirely untrue.)

This time out, the Aunt is Dahlia, the nice if loud one, who drags Bertie down to her historic pile outside Market Snodsbury to help out Bertie's old university chum Ginger Winship, who is standing for Parliament there. Ginger is affianced to the formidable Florence Craye, and is being supported in his political battle by the odious Roderick Spode (now Lord Sidcup), who is also joined by his fiancée, Madeleine Basset, who famously believes the stars are God's daisy-chain.

Both Florence and Madeleine are former fiancées of Bertie's, and both could potentially re-establish that connection if their current beaus disappoint.

Meanwhile, the club for butlers and gentlemen's personal gentlemen, the Junior Ganymede, has a book in which members are required to write down everything "interesting" or relevant about their current employers, which means there's a very long section about Bertie's various escapades. Even worse, there's a section about Ginger, and his former man, Bingley, has absconded with that book and is offering it for sale to various persons around Market Snodsbury.

There's also an unpleasant American businessman in a Panama hat, who wants to sell a valuable silver thingy to Aunt Dahlia's husband. Dahlia also wants him to bestow a large quantity of money on Tuppy Glossop, another chum of Bertie's, whose father developed a fabulously successful product for the American and who is looking to marry Dahlia's daughter Angela. (Angela and Tuppy do not appear on-page at all in this novel; there are complications here that are mostly formal.)

Wodehouse runs through his usual type of scenes to get to the requisite happy ending - as I said up top, a bit quicker and less impressively than some earlier novels, but still breezily and deeply amusingly.

Don't start reading Bertie-and-Jeeves with this book. You don't actually need to read them through in order - the details rhyme more than they build - but start with Joy in the Morning or The Code of the Woosters or The Mating Season or one of the short-story collections, and then move on as you feel inclined. Wodehouse is one of the greatest comic writers of the 20th century, if not all time, and his worlds are sunny and enticing, particularly when the real one is neither of those things.