Code of the Woosters (The Jeeves Omnibus #1.2) ★★★☆½

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Title: Code of the Woosters
Series: The Jeeves Omnibus #1.2
Author: P.G. Wodehouse
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Humor
Pages: 263
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Bertie Wooster is bamboozled into helping out various friends and relatives as they try to get what they want, whether it be a wife, a husband, a policeman's helmet, a diary, a superb chef or even a silver cow creamer, Bertie is at his best, messing everything up. Since he has ignored Jeeves' recommendation to take a world tour on a cruise ship, Jeeves is less than completely helpful.

But in the end Jeeves doesn't let his master down and everything works out ok for everyone except for the Justice of the Peace who once fined Bertie Wooster 5 pounds. Imagine the gall!

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed this but it was just a touch too long. If Wodehouse had knocked it back to 200 pages, the humor would have been more palatable. I mean, after a point rich people having problems like not being able to keep their cook just isn't funny when you're dealing with 8 other rich people, almost all of whom are so stupid it is surprising they haven't walked in front of a bus yet, all dealing with similar “problems”. It starts out funny but like a fish, starts to smell after a while.

That being said, up until the 75% mark, there were quite a few instances where I was just chortling to myself at the pure outrageousness of the happenings. I mean, Bertie is such a good hearted idiot that you want him to succeed even while knowing he's an idiot and is going to flub things up.

I only gave this 3stars back in '02 even while my review from then leads me to believe I found it funnier back then than this time around. However, I wasn't actually using a 5star system (that started in '07 or '09 with my time at Goodreads) but retconn'ed all my books into the 5star system. I was using some vague and completely subjective 100 point system based on my highschool grading system. Man, how the times they have a'changed!

Despite all my complaining, I did enjoy this quite a bit and laughed out loud enough times so that Mrs B stopped asking me what I was laughing about. I think that says just how good this book actually was.

★★★☆½

• Code of the Woosters (2002 Review)
• All the Jeeves Reviews