EQMM 1952-02 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: detective
Publisher: American Mercury
Published: 1952-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Strychnine in the Soup

by P. G. Wodehouse {Copyright, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse}

Late in 1949, Pocket Books published THE BEST OF WODEHOUSE, selected and with an Introduction by Scott Meredith. In this “sampler” — “a million dollars’ worth of enjoyment” which went on to sell more than a million copies — Mr. Meredith included what he considered the best short story about each of Wodehouse’s best-known characters. Thus, the sampler contains some of the finest tales about Jeeves (played in the movies by Arthur Treacher), Freddie Widgeon, Mr. Mulliner, Ukridge, Lord Emsworth, Bingo Little, and others. Mr. Meredith’s choice of a Mulliner story was “Strychnine in the Soup,” and if it isn’t the best Mulliner, surely it is top-grade, A No. 1, nonpareil, one of the fairest flowers of the flock, and generally five-star of its bind.

In his Introduction, Scott Meredith tells more about P. G. Wodehouse than you will find in all the standard biographical tomes. He points out, for example, that “Wodehouse is the only writer in the world who can cause other writers to stop raving about their own work and rave about his”; that “Wodehouse is one of those rare, genuinely modest people... who turns around to see who is standing there when the applause begins for him”; that “the secret of Wodehouse’s magic art is about as easy to pin down as a strip of quicksilver in a pool of water”; and last, but decidedly not least, that all Introductions to Wodehouse are sheer lunacy, since “only a lunatic would continue to read this writer when he can be reading P. G. Wodehouse.”

Mr. Meredith is a dyed-in-the-wool devotee — and who can blame him?

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