Hot Water

by P.G. Wodehouse

Blurb:

At French seaside Château Blissac, J. Wellington Gedge from California wants to go home. His larger richer wife wants him to be a Paris Ambassador, blackmails Senator Opal, publicly dry, with a letter to his bootlegger in her safe. Jewels attract criminals tough 'Soup' Slattery and 'Oily' Carlisle, who mourn female partners here unknown.

Amid confusion of assumed identities and one real undercover detective, 'Packy' Patrick Franklyn, rich ex-Yale footballer, wants Jane Opal to be happy. Jane's fiancé poor writer 'Egg' Blair Eggleston is touted by Packy's fiancée culture-lofty Lady Beatrice Bracken. Rakish 'Veek' Vicomte de Blissac returns for holiday festival where men drink, fight, and find love-- or at least reward from safe.

My Reaction:
First, this was a shared read with Donald.  Any time I read Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, or Donald Westlake, it's almost certainly going to have been a "shared reading".  Some books are just much better when read aloud!

If you generally like Wodehouse, you'll like this book, too.  I wouldn't say it was one of my personal favorites (maybe a bit repetitive at times, too many American characters, lacking the typical English country house setting and the cozily familiar recurring characters), but it was still very good.

Hot Water is light and funny, with all the twisty plotting, witty humor, and charm you'd expect from the author.