P. G. Wodehouse is one of my favorite authors. I love his witty dialogue, quirky characters, and how messy his storylines get before all the seemingly superfluous information comes into play to give you a satisfying ending. I frequently compare them to murder mysteries: you have to pay attention or you’ll miss out on all the clever nuances of the ending.
So, when I stumbled on a steampunk Jeeves and Wooster inspired murder mystery it was, for me, the work of an instant to download and read it.
It was unbelievably fantastic. Chris Dolley has Wodehouse’s style mimicked to perfection. The steampunk/sci-fi addition of an automaton Jeeves, named Reeves, was ironically funny, because Jeeves seems a superhuman marvel anyway, and in Dolley’s version he kinda is. Bertie Wooster’s look-a-like is a bumbling private detective named Worcester. He went about solving the mystery with the same muddled brilliance as Bertie uses when matchmaking for his pals at the Drones Club. Add to that multiple Hounds of the Baskerville‘s references, plus one large Orangutang and basically, I couldn’t stop laughing.
This book was number three of a series. Thankfully it could easily stand alone, so when I go back and read the others I won’t be confused.
And I will be reading the others.
R. C. Svendsen 