Strychnine in the Soup

"Strychnine in the Soup" is a short story by the British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. A part of the Mr. Mulliner series, the story was first published in 1932 in Strand Magazine. It also appears in the collections Mulliner Nights and Wodehouse on Crime.^[1] A BBC TV adaptation of the story aired on 9 April 1976 starring John Alderton as Cyril Mulliner and Pauline Collins as Amelia Bassett as part of the Wodehouse Playhouse series of short stories.^[2]

Overview

Cyril Mulliner, an interior decorator with a passion for mystery stories, finds a handful of his flesh being twisted by the lovely Amelia Bassett at a showing of The Grey Vampire and the two fall instantly in love with each other. Fate, however, has thrown a spanner in the works, in the form of Amelia's mother, Lady Bassett, a well-known big game hunter and explorer, who objects to an interior decorator as a son-in-law, preferring that Amelia marry Lester Mapledurham ("pronounced 'Mum'"), another well-known big game hunter and explorer. The plot twists and turns (and thickens) but Cyril wins Amelia in the end, thanks to a wandering copy of the new Inspector Mould mystery, Strychnine in the Soup.

References