Castle, Everett Rhodes "Why Trim a Christmas Tree?"

Comic, Damon Runyunesque tale of grifters aboard the fictitious liner CITY OF COLON, bound from San Francisco to New York via the Panama Canal. “Mr. Horace Beresford, alias J. Parker Comerford, alias Eddie the Duke” and confederate “Chas B. Nickerson, Altoona, Pa.” (aka “Sidney A. Bemis, Arthur H. Toomey and other flights of baptismal fancy”) are on the lookout for a rich mark. They think that they have found him in seemingly wealthy Col. Humphrey Flack, comfortably ensconced in a luxury suite on A Deck. As Mr. Beresford puts it: “I like to trim a sucker the way a sucker trims a Christmas tree.” Alas, the Colonel is as much a phony as they are, and indeed, by journey’s end, has set a plan in motion to take Horace and Sidney to the cleaners! A fun read, and an interesting relic of escapist popular fiction in the months leading up to America’s entry into the Second World War.