The Little Nugget

'The Little Nugget' is the kidnappers' name for Ogden Ford, a fat, chain-smoking, rude and badly spoilt American boy, aged thirteen or fourteen. Ogden's mother and father (she rich, he richer) are divorced, and each trying to get the boy away from the other. Meanwhile professional kidnappers are trying to get him, for ransom from either parent. Elmer Ford, the father, pays double fees for Ogden to go to a snobbish little English preparatory school (boarding) where he thinks the boy will be fairly safe and may even learn some discipline. Peter Burns (rich, a cricket and rugger Blue) is persuaded by his fiancée, who is in the pay of Mrs Ford, to go as an assistant master to this school and kidnap Ogden so that his mother can get him on to a yacht and out of his father's reach. But who is White, the new school butler? A professional kidnapper. And others prowl and prow around. Peter Burns tells the story (except the first twenty-five pages of it) and it makes an excellent thriller, set mostly in the grounds and house of the prep school.

Source: Richard Usborne. Plum Sauce. A P G Wodehouse Companion.