MULLIGAN'S PIRATES

In this semi-sophisticated comedy, an American ex-sailor and a Scottish laird team up to rob a U.S. aircraft carrier of two million dollars when the ship docks on the French Riviera. It is a perfect robbery in that all money aboard ship is in small denominations and can't be traced. The Riviera background allows the author to indulge his fancy in wealthy types, champagne and high-living, while revealing a plot slightly less witty than a Sinatra flick. In fact, aside from an earthy word or two, the farce is more Wodehousean than Hollywoodian...Mulligan, after 12 years as a U.S. gob, marries the nymphomaniac daughter of a French hotelkeeper. But life is hell and he is treated like a menial by his new relatives and his wife. He falls in with a Scottish laird who desperately needs about a million dollars to save his ancestral estate from slipping into the hands of the Crown's tax collectors. The laird has decided to marry his sister off to a vastly wealthy Arabian prince. But instead she falls for a young U.S. naval lieutenant she mistakenly believes is the wealthiest officer in the Navy. To save his sister, the laird plans his act of piracy, while Mulligan's new family is recruited as accomplices... There's a market for this among uncritical readers; we felt a bit jaded.