Hot Water

Hot Water is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published on August 17, 1932, in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, and on the same date in the United States by Doubleday, Doran, New York. The novel had previously been serialised in the American magazine Collier's. The story takes place at the Château Blissac, near the town of St Rocque in Brittany. Packy Franklyn, an American millionaire and sportsman, is engaged to Lady Beatrice Bracken and is staying in England. A chance meeting with the great Dry legislator Senator Ambrose Opal and the senator's daughter Jane Opal leads to Packy becoming involved in much mischief at St Rocque in France in order to recover a compromising letter. Plot J. Wellington Gedge lives with his rich wife (who inherited a fortune from her first husband) at the Château Blissac, near St Rocque, Brittany. She wants them to live in France although he longs to return to his hometown, Glendale, California. Mrs Gedge is going on a short trip to London, but has invited some guests: the American Senator Opal and his daughter, and the Vicomte de Blissac. Mrs Gedge wants them to make Mr Gedge the American Ambassador to France, an idea which appalls Mr Gedge. At the nearby Hotel des Etrangers are two American criminals, confidence trickster Gordon "Oily" Carlisle and safe-blower "Soup" Slattery. Oily admits that he and his wife, "Gum-Shoe Gertie", had a falling-out a year prior. Soup tries to rob Mr Gedge, but Gedge has no money. They bond over their losses in the stock market crash. Gedge mentions that he was rich when he married and gave his wife sixty thousand dollars' worth of jewels, which are usually kept in a safe. Soup plans to rob the safe, with Oily acting as the inside man (which they call "working the inside stand").