Review: Money for Nothing

Money for Nothing by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not in the absolute first rank of Wodehouse, but a solid, amusing piece nonetheless, featuring several characters who turn up in other books; the hapless criminals "Chimp" Twist and Dolly and Soapy Molloy first appeared in Sam the Sudden and also have roles in several subsequent books, and Ronnie Fish and Hugo Carmody are later seen in the Blandings novels Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather (Ronnie being a nephew of the Earl of Emsworth).

The central romance involves Hugo's cousin John, a worthy but diffident man, unlike most other Wodehouse characters in that he has a job (manager of his uncle Lester Carmody's dairy farm), is good at it, and apparently likes it. He is, and has been for years, in love with Pat, the daughter of his uncle's currently-estranged friend Colonel Wyvern (the stock retired military man of the village), but she doesn't rate him because she sees him as lacking backbone. In the course of the book, he demonstrates that this is not the case.

Lester Carmody conspires with the criminals, not knowing that they're career criminals, to defraud his insurance company and convert some family heirlooms that are entailed to the estate into ready money. Of course, everyone double-crosses everyone else, and through a combination of courage and outright good luck, John is able to foil the scheme; in this sense, it's a kind of anti-caper in the same way that the Jeeves and Wooster books are generally anti-romances. Along the way, we meet a typical menagerie of vivid minor characters, from the elderly, rabbit-loving Carmody butler to the ex-sergeant-major who works for "Chimp" Twist under the impression that he's a respectable physician running a legitimate health farm, the gossipy local chemist, and John's opinionated Welsh terrier, Emily.

It's all good fun, well paced, full of reversals and near-misses and shenanigans, conveyed in the trademark playful-but-apt Wodehouse language. The copy I had from Project Gutenberg is based on the US publication, which has a few passages that the British edition lacked, according to the Madam Eulalie fan-site; it's well edited and shows minimal scan issues.

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