Customer Reviews

Love Insurance

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Opening this book is to step back to pre-World War One America-- not America as it was, but as it was portrayed on the stage. The author was a moderately successful playwright and, later, the creator of the fine Charlie Chan mystery novels. This novel, with the wild improbabilities of a P.G. Wodehouse tale, involves the efforts of a good-natured but feckless English nobleman who gets Lloyds to insure his planned marriage with an American heiress. The boss at Lloyds witlessly assigns a handsome young agent to see things through. Can you see where this is going? Well, really, no you can't. The nobleman, the heiress and the Lloyds agent--and a lot of other people-- all wind up in a thinly disguised version of St. Augustine, Florida, at the old Flagler Hotel, a piece of fantasy architecture you can still visit. The author is good at evoking the wealthy tropical milieu. Quite a number of films were adapted from this novel; in fact, the reader can slip easily into imagining it as a silent picture--with all the dialogue supplied. Biggers is a surprisingly good stylist; and though this is just a charming bit of fluff, it has some literary merit.