[In the following review, Marsh contends that Wodehouse's short story collection, Plum Pie,“may not contain top-notch examples of his skill, but it is still very good Wodehouse indeed.”]

P. G. Wodehouse invented his own 1920s—scarcely brushed by reality when he first wrote about them, comfortingly unaffected by the passing of time ever since.

His Plum Pie, a collection of short stories, is rather like the finale of a traditional British pantomime at Christmas time, with the characters gathering onto the stage together, all busily performing samples of their own acts.

Bertie Wooster is here, among old favorites, trembling like an aspen at the prospect of donning white whiskers and a padded stomach to say “Ho, Ho, Ho” at a children's party (“I don't know if you've ever seen an aspen—I haven't myself as far as I can remember—but I knew they were noted for trembling like the dickens”).

Bingo Little is engaged, inadvertently, of course, in banning the bomb and his picture makes Page 8 of the Mirror. “He sat gazing at it with his eyes protruding in the manner popularized by snails, looking like something stuffed by a taxidermist who hard learned his job from a correspondence course and had only got as far as Lesson Three.”

Freddie Threepwood has become “a force to be reckoned with in the dog-biscuit industry”; Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge manages to move out of and back into financial straits in the course of one short story.

The ninth Earl of Emsworth, pig-fancier, still maintains his firm half-grasp on things in a manner that many of us share but none of us confesses. (“Ah, yes, I have heard of Niagara Falls. People go over them in barrels, do they not? Most uncomfortable, I should imagine, though no doubt one would get used to it in time.”)

Jeeves, alas, operates in only one story.

Beach, as portly as ever, puts in the briefest of appearances, complicating a truly Wodehousian embroilment. Lord Emsworth mistaken, on sound grounds, for a prowler, is imprisoned in Colonel Fanshawe's coal cellar, and is in danger of having, as Justice of the Peace, to try his own case. Beach, explains Freddie's Uncle Galahad, alone can save him. “He looked like a butler who has stiffened his sinews and summoned up the blood, as recommended by Henry the Fifth. ‘Very good, Mr. Galahad,’ he said.”

Only two women live in the Wodehouse world. They pop into every story—slightly changed, their names altered but basically the same—providing the threat needed to set a plot boiling.

Bertie's Aunt Dahlia is a sound representative of Species 1—the sometimes affectionate, always formidable, relation. (“I had rather the feeling you get when parting company with a tigress of the jungle or one of those fiends with hatchet who are always going about slaying six.”)

Species 2 is usually small, golden-haired, with eyes “of about the color of the Mediterranean on a good day.” Sometimes she is near-fatal—as in Freddie's experience with the girl who “attracted him like billy-o while repelling him like a ton of bricks.” It became “the most impressive case of adhesiveness since Mary had a little lamb.”

Sometimes Species 2 is a good sport, and the story evolves from complicated obstacles that must be cleared away on the road to the altar before the hero can “start shouting for clergymen and bridesmaids to come running.”

But it is not his men (often reprehensible) or his women (charming or not) that keep most Wodehouse fans so loyal.

It is his flair with a phrase—an ability to decliché a cliché and administer a sharp flick to a hackneyed quotation—that make his constant readers long to nudge others into appreciation. Plum Pie may not contain top-notch examples of his skill, but it is still very good Wodehouse indeed.