The Ice in the Bedroom

246 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's quarter black cloth with red, white and yellow lettering to spine over black boards in original pictorial illustrated jacket designed by Paul Bacon. (McIlvaine A84a.) Inscribed by the author. First American edition precedes the British edition.

Ice in the Bedroom is a novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published as a book in the United States (where the title was The Ice in the Bedroom) on February 2, 1961 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom on October 15, 1961 by Herbert Jenkins, London. The story was originally published, in a condensed version, in Canada in the November 11, 1960 issue of the Star Weekly, the weekend magazine supplement of the Toronto Star newspaper.

It features several Wodehouse characters from earlier books, including Drones Club members Freddie Widgeon and Oofy Prosser, and the trio of criminals, "Chimp" Twist and "Soapy" and "Dolly" Molloy.
The novel has two intertwined sub-plots. Freddie Widgeon, who wishes to marry Sally Foster, is seeking to escape from a dull job in a London office to become the manager of a coffee plantation in Kenya. Meanwhile, in the normally quiet suburb of Valley Fields, where Freddie is living, a cache of jewelry, hidden in the home of Freddie's neighbor, is attracting the attention of a small gang of petty criminals.

The story is essentially a re-working of Sam the Sudden (1925), which was also set in the fictional Valley Fields, had a sub-plot in which the same three crooks were hunting for hidden treasure, and entwined this with a romantic sub-plot.

Condition:

Signed by P.G. Wodehouse on front free endpaper with inscription "Best wishes". Jfront hinge cracked. Jacket with some chips and tears, light soiling and wear else very good i like jacket.