The central character here is a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll, the head of which screws off in case you want to fill it with, say, chocolates. Monty Bodkin bought it in the shop of the SS Atlantic, as a douceur for his on-again, off-again fiancée, Gertrude Butterwick. Gertrude had cut up rough when, seeing, in a snapshot Monty had sent her from Antibes, a spot on his chest, she had had the photograph enlarged and the spot spelt 'Sue' with a heart round it: a tattoo. Gertrude (centre forward) is travelling to America with an All-England ladies hockey team. Also aboard are Ivor Llewellyn, President of Superba-Llewellyn Motion Pictures of Hollywood, who has been, to his horror, ordered by his wife to smuggle a pearl necklace for her past the New York Customs; Reggie and Ambrose Tennyson, brothers, Reggie an amusing drone of the type that the ravens feed, Ambrose a serious spare-time novelist, who has been hired away from his job at the Admiralty to write for Superba-Llewellyn for $1,500 a week (Llewellyn had been told that he was the Tennyson, who had written The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, which of course was by Shakespeare). Ambrose is engaged to Lottie Blossom, Hoboken Irish redhead movie star with a pet alligator, the most turbulent of all Wodehouse's hell-raising heroines. The staterooms (or 'sheds') of all these passengers are served by steward Albert Eustace Peasemarch, tubby, talkative and, if, as seems likely, this was once a play or film script, a fat part for Eric Blore.

Another Anglo-American novel, ninety per cent of it afloat, long and one of the best.

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