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Do Butlers Burgle Banks? (1968)

by P. G. Wodehouse

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4761051,330 (3.91)6
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?(1968) features Mike Bond, the hitherto fortunate owner of Bond's Bank, who finds himself in a spot of trouble so serious that he wants someone to burgle the bank before the trustees inspect it. Fortunately for him, Horace Appleby, currently posing as his butler, is on hand to oblige. For Horace is, in fact, not a butler at all but the best sort of American gangster, prudently concealing himself in an English country house while hiding from his rivals. Looking for peace and safety, Horace is to discover before long that the hot-spots of New York are a whole lot more restful than the English countryside. This is the lightest of light comedies, a Wodehousian souffle from his later years.… (more)
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English (9)  Dutch (1)  All languages (10)
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
A master criminal takes a job as a butler in order to burgle the bank owned by his employer. Two spirited young "gairls" get involved, in furtherance of their true loves. A safe cracker gets religion, and casts well-laid plans agley. Fate is always doing things like that.

Typical Wodehouse, with a tangled yet frothy plot, and not a scene or character wasted. His characters here follow familiar archetypes, although the crooks offer something different. ( )
  gjky | Apr 9, 2023 |
Horace Appleby is a criminal, specialising in “inside jobs”, his modus operandi is to secure the position of butler in a respectably well-off establishment and then arrange the details whereby his companions carry out the actual burglary. But he is not too happy with the American, Mr. Yost, and Yost’s blatant disregard for Appleby’s most important rule, never carry a gun. So he refuses to pay Yost his cut, as you can imagine, Yost is not too happy about this. Not wanting to overly provoke a man who carries a gun Appleby things that maybe a job down the country might be just the thing.

( )
  Fence | Jan 5, 2021 |
Delightful, although the ending did not feel entirely natural. ( )
  Jon_Hansen | Sep 28, 2019 |
If you knew Wodehoue but read this one blind (you know what I mean!), you would know this was a Wodehouse (and not because of the mention of Jeeves/Wooster/Blandings etc).

A perfectly good example, though the ending was a little prefunctory.

Am working my way through the 90 or so Everyman Wodehouse portfolio and am nearly exactly half way (not all at once. of course). Am amazed that there have been so few that don't make it to at least 3 stars (and many considerably higher). I think it may be only one or 2 so far.

Big Ship

7 November 2018 ( )
  bigship | Nov 6, 2018 |
Pretty much perfectly paced, except for the end, which felt more like a chapter ending than the end of a story or book. The ending was sufficiently abrupt to knock an otherwise perfectly enjoyable Wodehouse novel down from a 5 to a 4 -- but don't let that deter the curious, by any means! It is otherwise more or less perfect for its genre. ( )
  tribblemaker | May 3, 2018 |
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
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Charlie Yost, the Chicago gunman, called on Horace Appleby one morning in June as he chatted with Basher Evans before going off to the Wallingford races.
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"... All those hospitals and libraries. Popularity went to his head. He was loved by everyone and wanted to stay loved, and the way to retain that universal esteem was to go on being Wallingford's Lord Bountiful. I suppose he started in a perfectly straightforward way by using his own money, and when that ran out he either had to stop being a guardian angel or use other people's." (p. 73)
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Do Butlers Burgle Banks?(1968) features Mike Bond, the hitherto fortunate owner of Bond's Bank, who finds himself in a spot of trouble so serious that he wants someone to burgle the bank before the trustees inspect it. Fortunately for him, Horace Appleby, currently posing as his butler, is on hand to oblige. For Horace is, in fact, not a butler at all but the best sort of American gangster, prudently concealing himself in an English country house while hiding from his rivals. Looking for peace and safety, Horace is to discover before long that the hot-spots of New York are a whole lot more restful than the English countryside. This is the lightest of light comedies, a Wodehousian souffle from his later years.

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