Customer Reviews

The Mouse on Wall Street (55305699075, S569975CABB, 1971 Printing, Second Edition)

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I read this long ago in my school library, and I'm rather disappointed to find it out of print. It's a direct sequal to "The Mouse that Roared", where the Duchy of Grand Fenwick deals with a serious problem -- too much money. Individually, we can wish for that problem, but on a nationwise scale, too much money equals inflation. To cure a nationwide inflation problem, the ministers come up with a solution -- lose the money in the stock market. As with "The Mouse that Roared", the plan gets seriously fractured by the agents used to implement it, and some real crazy stuff goes on before things are settled.

The Mouse That Roared was made into a popular movie with Peter Sellers. The Mouse on the Moon also made it to cinema. This third novel of Grand Fenwick, so far as I know, has yet to hit the silver screen. In my opinion it's not quite as funny as the others, but other factors kept me reading. Chief among these was the fact that Irish-born author Leonard Wibberly knows a lot about how finance works, and somehow managed to explain it clearly enough in this convuluted farce that even the economically challenged-- read: broke writers-- like myself could catch a glimmer of the mysteries of the dismal science.

For those who don't know, the Mouse in the title is a tiny country, Grand Fenwick, ruled by Duchess Gloriana XII and Count Mountjoy, although the Labor Candidate gets into office in this third novel. When the country's only profitable enterprise, a wine flavored gum made in the United States, begins to bring in a bankroll, Mountjoy sees the specter of mounting inflation, and schemes to get rid of the money. When the Duchess attempts to play the market in an attempt to buy worthless stocks, however, things go awry and in a comedy of errors she makes more and more of the green stuff until the world economy is in jeopardy.

It's all a bit of a lark but I got enough of a clue to be able to read the stock exchange page and have some inkling what's going on. If this one makes it to the movies,I'd picture someone like Eva Gabor (from Green Acres) as the Duchess: charming yet unleashing a whirlwind with her Wall Street speculations. Three cheers (and four stars) for the Meece.