THE EIGHTEEN-CARAT KID And Other Stories

Minor, minor Wodehouse--even more so than the two other recent posthumous collections of his early periodical writing (Not George Washington, p. 164; The Swoop!, 1979). The title novella takes up over half of this slim volume; it's the twelve-chapter account (originally penned as a magazine serial) of the comic complications--gangsters, bodyguards, kidnap, disciplinary chaos--when the spoiled, smoking son of an American millionaire is enrolled at a veddy English prep school. ""The Wire-Pullers"" (1905) tells of a daughter's bet on her father's cricket ability--and how she contrives to up his score. ""The Prize Poem"" (1901) is a little anecdote about the happy demise of a mandatory Sixth Form poetry competition. And ""William Tell Told Again"" (1904) is just that--Wodehouse's only writing for children: a nicely breezy version that only becomes vigorously Wodehousian in the comic bombast of dictator Gessler. An occasional chuckle, a speck of historical interest; most Wodehouse fans will prefer to re-read No Nudes is Good Nudes or The Girl in Blue.