I don’t know if two authors count as the start of a trend, but I find that when it comes to comic series, the first few books aren’t necessarily the best. It’s like that for the first few Discworld books (one of the reasons why I’m not a huge Rincewind fan) and I find that it’s like that for Thank You, Jeeves, which is the first novel-length Jeeves and Wooster Story.

In Thank You, Jeeves, the impossible has happened: Bertie has fallen in love. Thankfully, the engagement to Pauline Stoker is quickly broken off, but his love for the banjo seems permanent. Even Jeeves can’t face the music and he ends up leaving Bertie to work for Bertie’s old friend, Chuffy. As it happens, Bertie needs to play his banjo in a cottage and where else should he end up but where Chuffy, Jeeves, and Pauline are?

As always, the story is a comedy of errors, with every attempt by Bertie to improve the situation somehow making things worse. However, while I found quite a few of the jokes funny, the book never really made me laugh the way the other Jeeves and Wooster books did. Perhaps it’s the tension of having Bertie estranged from Jeeves, but something just didn’t quite work for me.

Overall, this was a decent but not terribly memorable book. While I think the book missed its mark because it’s so early on in the series, I now think it’s possible that reading this at the end of a school term was not the right time for this book. I did buy it instead of borrowing it, so perhaps I will reread this in the future and eat my words.