The Amazing Hat Mystery

by P.G. Wodehouse

'Wodehouse is a tonic' - New Yorker.

A Wodehouse pick-me-up that'll lift your spirits, whatever your mood.

Cheaper and more effective than Valium’.*

Offers ‘relief from anxiety, raginess or an afternoon-long tendency towards the sour’.*

‘Read when you’re well and when you’re poorly; when you’re travelling, and when you’re not; when you’re feeling clever, and when you’re feeling utterly dim.’*

Whatever your mood, P. G. Wodehouse, widely acknowledged to be ‘the best English comic novelist of the century’*, is guaranteed to lift your spirits.

Why? Because ‘Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.’*

How? ‘You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.’*

*Olivia Williams *Caitlin Moran *Lynne Truss *Sebastian Faulks *Evelyn Waugh *Stephen Fry

Meet the Young Men in Spats – all members of the Drones Club, all crossed in love and all busy betting their sometimes non-existent fortunes on unlikely outcomes – that's when they're not recovering from driving their sports cars through, rather than round, Marble Arch.

These wonderful comic short stories are the essence of innocent fun. Here, you'll encounter some of Wodehouse's favourite characters – and, in 'The Amazing Hat Mystery', one of his favourite stories.

Contents:
- The Amazing Hat Mystery
- Uncle Fred Flits By
- Trouble Down at Tudsleigh

Genres: Short Stories, Novella, Humor, Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2017

About the author

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Reviews

[Amena · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have any holidays planned, any short breaks, or generally just want to have a right good time, then pick up some Wodehouse. His sentences are smashing, he will make you laugh out loud and wonder why you have never read him before. Thank you for being the perfect travel companion and filling my evenings with a wonderful light-heartedness.
Rating - 5🌟because every story was a cracker!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book features three short stories from the humourist PG Wodehouse. The first, The Amazing Hat Mystery, tells the story of a man with an uncommonly large head and a man with an uncommonly small head, who struggle in their endeavours to find the correct sort of hats to woo the women they are courting. The second, Uncle Fred Flits By, features the recurring characters of Pongo Twistleton and his mischievous Uncle Fred getting themselves into trouble when they decide to take shelter from the rain in somebody else's house. Finally, the third story, Trouble Down at Tudsleigh, sees Drones club member Freddie Widgeon try to impress the girl he is seeing by memorising the prose of Lord Tennyson, but things don't go quite to plan. As ever with Wodehouse, the plot itself is largely irrelevant, and the reader can simply sit back and enjoy his wonderful way with words and sense of humour. 6/10

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mom recommended this to me after I showed her The Importance of Being Earnest. These short stories are definitely along the same lines of stupid, but perhaps a little more bizarre. Definitely a fun read.

[Stuart Haining · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10 2% FPPB. A small reprint book of short stories - as always a delight to read. The plots rarely change, boy meets girl, loses girl, finds girl, wants to propose, elderly Bishop relative objects etc - with a surprise twist by the end! Three super examples of the master at work here.

[Malay · Rating 5 out of 5]

PG Wodehouse’s brilliance, like the hats in this collection, appears effortlessly magical. His consistent genius must have something to do with the Fourth Dimension. I am convinced that that is the true explanation, if our minds could only grasp it.

[David Robert Bloomer · Rating 5 out of 5]

3 sniffing tales from the great wordsmith. As an introduction to Wodehouse these are 3 crackers. Great as a little pick me up after a downbeat book.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a load of tosh!
This kind of idiotic buffunery does nothing for me.

[Nidhi Srivastava · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a Wodehouse, which I like, and they're short stories, which I don't necessarily like. Also, with this book, I'm really having to re-examine my completionism.

[Madhav Thapar · Rating 5 out of 5]

PG Wodehouse is always a delight. Ideal happiness reading!

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great little book for a Christmas Day read. Wodehouse always makes me chuckle. Three short stories in one short book.

[Spencer Fancutt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blandings still the best for me, but these three keep one chuckling along nicely. Lovely.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

These small collections of short stories are just the things to brighten up your day. Fantastic

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Amazing Hat Mystery (from Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Uncle Fred Flits By (from Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Trouble Down at Tudsleigh (from Young Men in Spats, 1936)

[Faidz Zainal Abidin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*