Frozen Assets (Biffen's Millions) (original) (raw)

US Title: Biffen's Millions
First published in US: July 14 1964 by Simon & Schuster, New York
UK Title: Frozen Assets
First published in UK: August 14 1964 by Herbert Jenkins, London

Russian translation

Wodehouse's artistic level here readied a height which was thoroughly satisfying and acknowledged to be brilliantly executed. Although the idea of helping a friend keep out of trouble for a specific period of time originally occurred in Bill the Conqueror, this is a far superior treatment and altogether highly enjoyable.

Synopsis

Two years ago English journalist Jerry Shoesmith had met American journalist Kay Christopher on the _Mauretania._And now they meet again in a Paris police station - a very good scene this, for openers: Wodehouse was obviously remembering how he and his wife had been pushed around by the Paris police in 1944. Kay is engaged to a stuffed-shirt Englishman at the Paris Embassy. Her brother Biff had saved the life of Lord Tilbury's brother and will inherit a million pounds on condition he is not arrested before the age of thirty. Only a week to go, but the urge to drink is strong and, when drunk, he finds the urge to sock cops strong. And, working for Lord Tilbury, who thinks he should have his brother's million pounds, is Percy Pilbeam, who tries to get Biff drunk and seeking cops to sock. Lord Tilbury's secretary is Gwendoline Gibbs and he is in love with her and will marry her. Lord Tilbury's niece, who is his hostess in the Wimbledon Common mansion, Linda Rome, will marry Biff. They had been engaged years before. Jerry will marry Kay.

There is a sequence of debaggings in Valley Fields. Henry Blake-Somerset (he's the mother-dominated stuffed-shirt Embassy chap) had twice been debagged by rowdies at Oxford. Now he is debagged by the debagged Pilbeam, and Lord Tilbury and Biff Christopher make up the chain, each clothing himself in the bags of the next comer. Surprisingly funny as told here, but hasn't Lord Tilbury been debagged, in Valley Fields, before? Yes, in Ice in the Bedroom.

We find in this book a whole new list of authors from whom Wodehouse quotes: Shelley, Du Maurier, Robert Service, Alexander Woollcott, Theodore Dreiser, Horace (in Latin), Shakespeare (Henry IV), Malory, Burke, Defoe, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane.

Source: Richard Usborne. Plum Sauce. A P G Wodehouse Companion.