Time for another link to a Shiny New Books review. And this one is an absolute joy – any fans of P.G. Wodehouse or early Hollywood will love this one. It’s the 1914 novel Love Insurance by Earl Derr Biggers.
As is my practice, I’ll give you the first paragraph of the review, and then send you over to Shiny New Books if you’d like to read more…
It’s fun occasionally to read a book that doesn’t take itself remotely seriously. And it would be impossible for Love Insurance (1914) by Earl Derr Biggers to take itself seriously for a moment – before a few dozen pages are finished, the reader has had to buy a number of extremely unlikely situations – but that all adds to the pleasure. It is unmistakably of its time (if A.A. Milne had written a novel in the 1910s, when he was still being guiltlessly insouciant, it might have been a lot like this) but that doesn’t mean it can’t still charm a century later.
The rest of the review is here…