Wodehouse's first book. It's not a humorous novel in the vein of much of his later work, but it does raise a smile here and there; it's easy to see how he was able to take the glib slang of his day and exaggerate it into the dry hysteria of the far more famous Bertie Wooster stories. He has an ear for the dialogue of upper-crust English people and how they talk around things, and that's apparent from the start.

The "plot" here is paper-thin, which is unsurprising. However, as other reviewers have pointed out, there are far too many (nearly identical) characters to follow clearly. He'll also be more skilled at balancing his prose later in his career. Here, there are long, long sections of nothing but dialogue, and a few others that are nothing but descriptions of sporting action.

It's really not a bad book at all, but it's extremely slight and obviously loses a lot of its intended appeal outside its original audience. ( )

Very amuſiŋ comedic adventures of Engliſh public boardiŋ ſchool boys. ( )

School story featuring Tony Graham; Allen Thomson and his brother Jim Thomson; Welch, Morrison, MacArthur known as the Babe, Reade, Dallas, Vaughan, Plunkett, Charteris, Barrett, and others. A few brief appearances by Inspector Roberts, Scotland Yard. The first chapter is an introductory opening which details a boxing match between Tony and Allen; a fine stand-alone example of Wodehouse's storytelling of sporting events. The school's "pots" (trophies) have been stolen from the pavillion; Barrett finds them in a hollow trunk but can't tell anyone because he was "out of bounds" and trespassing on the grumpy Sir Alfred Venner's lands. Suspicion falls on Jim, especially from Mr. Thompson, master of the sixth form, who is doing a little amateur detecting and discovers that Jim is short of funds to pay a debt; but Inspector Roberts makes short work of Thompson's career in detection. Roberts discovers the culprit and the pots are restored while Jim is missing, having sprained his ankle coming back from a friend's house. A search eventually turns him up. He is still, however, short of funds, so Charteris organizes an all night work party to produce a special edition of the Glow Worm, a "strictly unofficial" monthly magazine, the proceeds of which retire Jim's debt. ( )

One of P. G. Wodehouse's very early "school" stories -- the British genre set at what in the U.S. would be called "prep schools" (this is also the genre parodied by Rawlings' Hogwarts). They follow this tradition by focusing heavily on sports and boyish politics and regarding students who take studying series (like Plunkett in this story) with disdain. This story involves boxing (in the opening) foot races, and the theft of some sports trophies, so it has a mystery aspect. This was printed in 1972 when the older Wodehouse was approaching the end of his career, but was originally written in the early 1900s. ( )

This was his first published work and truly lacks the humor of later works. There are some small indications of things to come, but no laugh out loud moments. This story of young men at a boy's school felt more like Horatio Alger than Wodehouse. ( )