Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

A Novel in Homage to P. G. Wodehouse

By: Ben Schott

Narrated by: Daniel Ings

Jeeves and Wooster return in a new espionage caper full of japes, high jinks, and jiggery-pokery in a series that is “impossible to read without grinning idiotically” (Evening Standard).

The Drones club’s in peril. Gussie’s in love. Spode’s on the war path. Oh, and His Majesty’s Government needs a favor....

I say! It’s a good thing Bertie’s back, what?

In his eagerly anticipated sequel to Jeeves and the King of Clubs, Ben Schott leads Jeeves and Wooster on another elegantly uproarious escapade.

From the mean streets of Mayfair to the scheming spires of Cambridge, we encounter a joyous cast of characters: chiseling painters and criminal bookies, eccentric philosophers and dodgy clairvoyants, appalling poets and pocket dictators, vexatious aunts and their vicious hounds.

But that’s not all:

Who is Iceberg, and why is he covered in chalk?

Why is Jeeves reading Winnie-the-Pooh?

What is seven across and 85 down?

How do you play Russian Roulette at The Savoy?

These questions, and more, are answered in Jeeves and the Leap of Faith - an homage to P.G. Wodehouse, authorized by his estate, and essential listening for fans of The Master.

Tinkety-tonk!

©2020 Ben Schott (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

"The whirligigging plot almost spins out of control here, but don't worry: Jeeves takes care of that just fine. Great fun—another round, please!"—Booklist

"Wodehouse’s droll byplay between master and servant is emulated well… [Schott] succeeds at keeping his many plates spinning. This’ll be a hoot for Wodehouse fans."—Publishers Weekly

"This homage to P.G. Wodehouse is so good that a blind reading (i.e. a genuine ‘Plum’ versus Schott’s pastiche) would be a tricky call. Everything is in its place...the sheer luxury, wealth and self-assurance of Bertie’s world is brilliantly evoked with all its enviable light-heartedness intact. A masterpiece in every sense." —Daily Mail

ABCD

Bertie is less the well-meaning simpleton of Wodehouse,'s world and Jeeves has a more human side. It is, however the word play paired with character and plot development that create long hours of pleasurable reading and listening. The able, actually superlative, narrative skills further enhance the audio version. There are rare examples of comedic writing such as Wodehouse penned; but this work, as Gussy and Bertie would have said, rise ABCD.

Worthy of Wodehouse

With "Jeeves and the Leap of Faith", Ben Schott has somehow improved on his previous Jeeves novel, "Jeeves and the King of Clubs". The language in this book is absolutely beautiful, capturing perfectly the feel of the Wodehouse style. What's more, the characterisations are perfectly on-key.

The performance by the narrator is superb, as Daniel Ings does an impressive array of accents, from plummy public school, to dignified RP, to Cockney, to West Country, to Scottish.

However, the director let the actor down by not catching a few mispronunciations. For example, the surname of Barmy Fotheringhay-Phipps is meant to be pronounced "fungy-phipps"; but in this performance the name is pronounced as spelt. Also, the name of Aunt Dahlia's chef Anatole is mispronounced as "Anatoly".

The failure of the publisher Hachette to hire a director who is steeped the Wodehouse œuvre shows a lack of respect towards the subject matter, and constitutes an insult to the author and his audience.

Fortunately, the instances of these mispronunciations are few, and so they do not significantly mar an otherwise excellent performance of this beautiful work. Notwithstanding the directorial errors, anyone who has become accustomed to the performances of Martin Jarvis and Jonathan Cecil as narrators will be impressed with Ings's performance here.

Wodehouse fans will love this book, as will anyone who is tickled by a dexterous use of the English language. Schott has succeeded, and gloriously so.

If you love Wodehouse, it would be injudicious to skip this treat!

In this novel, author Ben Schott did a tremendous job writing an original and engrossing caper while staying within the parameters of the world created by PG Wodehouse. The wordplay throughout is just wonderful. Witty, inspired and great fun!

Also, the reader was a joy to listen to except for one thing. There is a slightly irksome mispronunciation of a Cambridge college that comes up over and over again. Aside from that, it was wonderful reading! :)

Another tour de force by Ben Schott!

What ho! So so good! The language is a dream, the plot suitably twisted and multi-layered. The narration is perfection. The story is just begging to be made into a screenplay. Having watched the Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster episodes I can just picture the many predicaments and adventures Bertie tumbles in to. I’m sure I will listen to this again and pick up even more of the clever word gymnastics! Just a delight!

As Entertaining as the First Book

I'm still missing a lot of the British references but thoroughly enjoy the dialogue. I may need to buy the book and read it (instead of listening to the audiobook).

Loving The New Jeeves and Wooster

Loved the story. I was already a fan of the P. G. Wodehouse series, this addition of the espionage element is genius. I can’t wait for the book.

So much fun!

Writing is spot on and narrator is superb! Highly recommend. I hope there will be more in the future.

Lost all charm this time

We enjoyed the first book in the series quite a bit. The writing was a fun homage to Wodehouse and his Jeeves & Wooster characters, and the reader James Lance overcame any shortcomings in the writing with his perfect interpretation. Lance is superb at capturing all the zany characters and their respective dialects and personalities.

Unfortunately, this time all that remains are the character names. Jeeves and Bertie sound and behave so similarly that additionally, with this reader's near complete lack of voicing, it's easy to lose track of which of them is even speaking. Bertie's gormless and giddy antics are gone, Jeeves is a shadow of himself. If the reader put more personality into the dialogue and tried to capture any of the dialects, it could still be entertaining as there is a plot in there that can be fun enough (if you can ignore all the characters' lack of Wodehouse wit and hilarity). But between the writing and reading, it is disappointingly dry and dull. We really wanted to love it.

When is a spoiler not a spoiler?

Read this review and find out.
If you’ve read/listened to P. G. Wodehouse’s books and enjoyed them, should you give Ben Schott’s two “homages” (his description) a chance? Absolutely! Are they as good as the master’s? No, not quite but really, how could they be? Plum had decades of practice to perfect his craft and to any true fan, you can see, even in his work, improvement over time. But having said that they aren’t quite as good, they are definitely worth a listen and even a listen again at a later date just to hear some of the clever wordplay employed much as many Wodehouse fans have done with his books over the years.
But about that spoiler (don’t worry if you haven’t read this book yet) that isn’t a spoiler; without almost any correlation to anything that happened in the story to that point, at the very ending, the author throws in a new twist that turns the story into a cliffhanger!!! This was pointed out in another review from a couple of years back and it was bad enough then, when a follow up book could have cleared that cliffhanger up but now, with still no sign of a third book on the horizon, than the crime of proclaiming that by writing these books, Ben S. was only paying homage to the master and how blessed and honored he was, etc. only to then do what P. G. Wodehouse never did and write in a cliffhanger and now to leave it at that!!! Augh, I’m giving this 3 stars in the hopes that more Wodehouse fans who have gone through the entire Wodehouse oeuvre but would still like some more will give these a chance as going in and knowing they aren’t ever going to be as good but are damn close, will then get that enjoyment but if it weren’t for that sake, I’d drop the star rating to two, at the most, for, as that earlier review called it- Breaking a Cardinal Rule, especially as it wasn’t necessary as just as that review also stated, I would have bought a third book based on how good the first two were without the stupid addition ofa cliffhanger. For shame Ben S.

Pronunciation

I'm enjoying Ben Shott's 2nd book, but if you're going to write a true homage to PG Wodehouse, then the least you can do is get the correct English pronunciation from the narrator...
I'm less than an hour in and already disappointed that no one told Daniel Ings that Berkeley Square is pronounced 'Barkley' and Caius College Cambridge, as anyone born in England will tell you is pronounced 'Keys'. Editor please, where are you?