When Maud Marsh flings herself into George Bevan’s cab in Piccadilly, he starts believing in damsels in distress. George traces his mysterious traveling companion to Belpher Castle, home of Lord Marshmoreton, where things become severely muddled. Maud’s aunt, Lady Caroline Byng, wants Maud to marry Reggie, her stepson. Maud, meanwhile, is known to be in love with an unknown American she met in Wales. So when George turns up speaking American, a nasty case of mistaken identity breaks out. In fact, the scene is set for the perfect Wodehouse comedy of errors.

What a silly, happy book this is!

I’ve read a couple of the author’s Jeeves books — delightfully funny — and when I stumbled across A Damsel in Distress, I simply couldn’t resist picking it up… especially since it fits neatly into a reading challenge I’m trying to complete.

In A Damsel in Distress, American composer George Bevan is basically minding his own business after a production of his latest musical theater show when a woman barges into his cab in the middle of London, begging him to hide her. When a stout man catches up and demands that he reveal the woman in his cab — which he refuses to do — a chain of events is started that ends with George falling in love, the woman making her own clever escape, and her pursuer in the custody of police. And that’s only the beginning of the chaos that follows!

We follow several threads related to mismatched love interests, upstairs/downstairs shenanigans and schemes, and mistaken identity. Comedic set-pieces galore offer silly escapades and plenty of embarrassment for certain character, while the various entangled love stories go off in unexpected directions.

As always, Wodehouse’s writing is deliciously funny — as when George can either climb up a rope made of knotted bedsheets or be caught in a socially awkward position:

From above came Albert’s hoarse whisper. “Look alive!” This was precisely what George wanted to do for at least another fifty years or so; and it seemed to him as he stood there in the starlight, gingerly fingering this flimsy linen thing, that if he were to suspend his hundred and eighty pounds of bone and sinew at the end of it over the black gulf outside the balcony he would look alive for about five seconds, and after that goodness only knew how he would look.