The chapters tell a linked set of amusing and suspenseful stories with colorful characters and perfect, comical payoffs. If all that weren't enough, Jeeves prepares the perfect cup of tea and is a reliable (though severe) arbiter of fashion. Bertie's laconic "genius" valet Jeeves relies on his network of connections among the upper crust's servants and cooks and butlers and his knowledge of human nature and of Bertie's foibles to fish Bertie "out of the soup" or even to solve Bertie's mooching friend Bingo Little's serial love troubles. Bertie Wooster is a consummately idle idle rich chappie, rather foolish and none too intelligent and prone to getting into absurd fixes regarding women, betting (what he calls sporting), or relatives. The Inimitable Jeeves is the funniest audiobook I've listened to. Hilarious High Jinx Among the British Idle Rich And that story is simply one of Wodehouse's most delightful and entertaining.
The stories can be read or listened to individually, but they all link together as chapters in an ongoing story. This book happens to be one of Davidson's and Wodehouse's best efforts. And it's this side of the otherwise goofy, slow-witted Bertie that Davidson understood and expressed to a nicety. If Bertie were only a class-warfare stereotype I doubt the allure of the Jeeves-Wooster axis would have lasted as long as it has.
All this is important because it transforms Bertie Wooster from the fool with a silver spoon in his mouth to a character-albeit comic-who you actually get to know, like and care about. Then there is his good-heartedness: the lengths he goes to make every one of Bingo's romances come off, though knowing the effort is probably doomed. Just listen to his intonation as Bertie sizes up Bingo Little's latest girlfriend, describes the unspeakable Honoria Glossop or counters the machinations of the vile Rupert Steggles.
As a reader, Fredrick Davidson expresses that innate shrewdness in Bertie's character. While not a genius like Thomas Hardy or Jeeves, Bertie has a cagey sense of self-preservation and, what's more, lives up to Madeline Basset's assessment of him as "one of the only truly chivalrous men" she knows. I've always thought Bertie Wooster, so often characterized as a "dim-witted aristocrat", is actually wiser than he seems-both to his Aunt Agatha and to many readers.
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