Carol Bakker's Reviews > Barmy in Wonderland

Three stars means I like it —it's my default rating for genre fiction. This title isn't earth shattering, just a bit of silly fun. In the same way I read most mysteries for the "atmosphere" I read PGW for his wordsmith skills.

Cyril Fotheringay-Phipps (pronounced Fungy-Fips), nicknamed "Barmy" gambols into the world of theater. Dinty Moore made a great heroine. This action is located in America.

One scene made me chortle. Two crooked playwrights, coaxing Barmy to buy the play, give a fingernail sketch with a hilarious run-on sentence:

"So it's her bedroom and she's in a negligay, and in comes the hero through the window and says, 'Genevieve!', and she says 'Harold!', and she says 'Is it you?', and he says, 'Yah, it's me', and back and forth and back and forth, and then it comes out that the brother has died and confessed on his death-bed that it was him that dun it, and she says she loves the hero still but must stick to this guy she's married because she's the soul of honour, see, and they have a farewell scene, and suddenly in comes the husband and he thinks the hero is a burglar and he plugs him with his gun and the hero falls to the ground a corpse and the dame falls on top of him and has a fit and dies on his body. The next act's in heaven," said Mr. Lehman, going to the water-cooler.
Barmy blinked. "Heaven?"