THANK YOU, JEEVES

Bertie Wooster's endless playing of the banjolele prompts his neighbors to protest and his usually imperturbable valet, Jeeves, to quit. Bertie moves to the country to play his instrument along with a new valet (a knife-bearing arsonist). He is hosted by school chum Chuffy, who’s in love with Bertie's ex-fiancée, the American Pauline Stoker. In typical Wodehouse fashion, romantic misunderstandings and wrongful arrests ensue. Nicolas Coster's stuffed-shirt tone is perfect for upper-crust Englishmen, and his excellent pacing draws out the subtlety of the humorous wordplay. His English and American accents are spot-on, but he’s considerably less successful at distinguishing Jeeves from Wooster. The colorful drawings on the cover and the individual CDs are a nice touch. A.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2008]