Cole, GDH and M - The Affair at Aliquid (1933)
Published -- amazingly -- by the Collins Crime Club, this farcical novel concerns the antics of a con artist impersonating an African missionary at a philanthropist duke's country house party. There is a jewel robbery; but, though there is also an investigator, Inspector Bulkhead (good name!), there is no investigation worthy of the name and the solution to the jewel robbery is dropped into Bulkhead's lap, as an aside amidst the myriad acts of extreme zaniness. A genuinely humorous broad satire, which some might -- but probably shouldn't -- compare to Wodehouse (it seems too vulgar to me). But the only real mystery about The Affair at Aliquid is how the Coles talked Collins into publishing it as part of the Crime Club series. Maybe in a later decade it would have been a "Joan Kahn Harper Novel of Suspense"!
Curt.
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