The New Sonia Wayward

Rating:
Summary: Highly literate farce
Review: Sonia Wayward is the author of trashy but hugely successful novels. She drops dead on a small boat piloted by her buffoonish husband, Col. Ffolliot Petticate, who has become accustomed to the very comfortable life Sonia's royalties have made possible. So he tips the old girl's corpse overboard, returns to shore, keeps her death a secret, and sits down at the typewriter to crank out "the new Sonia Wayward". Many complications ensue in this wildly improbable farce which is also a very successful suspense novel. Imagine John Cleese playing Petticate and you'll get the general tone. Michael Innes was the pseudonym of Prof. J.I.M. Stewart (d. 1994), who excelled both as a scholar and a popular novelist.