tim_worldofsleuths's review
4.0
You can read my review at http://tims-reviews.blogspot.com/2018/09/book-review-55-love-insurance.html.
lissyir's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars good/very good
A lovely novel full of classic charm and old school romance. It read like an old movie, I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would have. There being plot twists and deceptions a plenty, running alongside the mysteries was a lovely but forbidden romance.
Well worth a read
A lovely novel full of classic charm and old school romance. It read like an old movie, I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would have. There being plot twists and deceptions a plenty, running alongside the mysteries was a lovely but forbidden romance.
Well worth a read
girlwithherheadinabook's review
4.0
Hesperus Press sent me this book for review and I want to start by apologising for quite how long it has taken me to get round to it. In my defence, I have moved house twice since July and started a new job. Ahem. I also want to thank them for Love Insurance though because I really loved it - I am a huge sucker for vintage comedy film (some of my favourites are It Happened One Night or Some Like It Hot) and even though Love Insurance was written and published earlier than that, I still found myself visualising the story in black and white. I discovered later that it had in fact been adapted as One Night in the Tropics but appeared to have gone through a fair few revisions in plot which seemed a shame. I cannot quite imagine Love Insurance ever being successfully released on the screen nowadays but it has such a deliciously zany sense of humour and Derr Biggers writes with such wit and humour that it seems really surprising that this book never became better known.
Earl Derr Biggers is best-known as the creator of Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective. Still, Chan himself has rather fallen out of fashion - I myself have only heard of him because of Gosford Park. This is one of his earlier novels, marrying the spectacle of The Great Gatsby with the one-liners and wit of Oscar Wilde. The novel opens with the American branch of Lloyds' insurers who specialise in under-writing unusual claims - against rain at an important dinner party, weight fluctuations in actors, having twins and similar. Enter the impoverished Lord Harrowby with the strangest claim of them all. He asks Owen Jephson to insure him against his fiancée the heiress Cynthia Meyrick breaking off their engagement.
Unable to resist the exciting challenge, Jephson agrees under the condition that the agreement will be null and void if the relationship breaks down due to any action of Harrowby himself. And then he sends his agent Dick Minot down to Florida where the wedding is taking place to ensure that Cynthia Meyrick makes it down the aisle without changing her mind. Lloyds assets must be protected. It's fairly predictable that Minot promptly falls in love with Cynthia and is torn between his honour and duty to Lloyds and his personal feelings. It is also fairly predictable that all kinds of impediments spring up in the way of the match from bitter ex-darlings of Harrowby to errant elder brothers returning to claim his title - all of these have to be dealt with by the ever-resourceful Minot. The joy of Love Insurance comes not from the twists and turns of its plot but rather the wicked turns of phrase and its lightning-quick one-liners.
There are too many absolute gems to be able to list them all here. Early on, I was in stitches at the description of the snail-paced train whose timetable was best described as a 'light work of fiction'. The journalist duo who find themselves improbably in charge of a newspaper are a wonderfully bracing pair of characters and indeed the supporting cast within this novel are superb. Mr Meyrick is the solemnly disapproving patriarch, highly suspicious of the brightly ineffective Lord Harrowby, while Cynthia's aunt does insist on rather swooning over the aristocracy. My personal favourite though was Jack Paddock who was eking out a living writing elegant conversation for fashionable hostesses, who therefore had to work to remember their lines which they were commended for delivering with such 'unconscious wit'. Minot, who is the only one in on the scam watches in silent amazement.
I could almost hear the jazz band playing the soundtrack in the background to Love Insurance as the characters ran around trying to get out of the latest scrape. I had only ever really experienced this era's cinema and now I feel as if I really ought to make an effort to discover more about the novels - I remembered all over again why I loved the old black and white romantic comedies. They are free of all of the vacuous desire to shock which makes so much of contemporary fiction such hard work. They have a humour which is hilarious without being patronising and there is a high-spirit behind them, an energy and an enthusiasm which has not yet been bogged down in a cynical search for commercial success. In short, despite its age, Love Insurance is as fresh as a daisy - I absolutely adored it - it made want to live in the 1920s in a way that The Great Gatsby never did.
For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/review-love-insurance-earl-derr-biggers.html
Earl Derr Biggers is best-known as the creator of Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective. Still, Chan himself has rather fallen out of fashion - I myself have only heard of him because of Gosford Park. This is one of his earlier novels, marrying the spectacle of The Great Gatsby with the one-liners and wit of Oscar Wilde. The novel opens with the American branch of Lloyds' insurers who specialise in under-writing unusual claims - against rain at an important dinner party, weight fluctuations in actors, having twins and similar. Enter the impoverished Lord Harrowby with the strangest claim of them all. He asks Owen Jephson to insure him against his fiancée the heiress Cynthia Meyrick breaking off their engagement.
Unable to resist the exciting challenge, Jephson agrees under the condition that the agreement will be null and void if the relationship breaks down due to any action of Harrowby himself. And then he sends his agent Dick Minot down to Florida where the wedding is taking place to ensure that Cynthia Meyrick makes it down the aisle without changing her mind. Lloyds assets must be protected. It's fairly predictable that Minot promptly falls in love with Cynthia and is torn between his honour and duty to Lloyds and his personal feelings. It is also fairly predictable that all kinds of impediments spring up in the way of the match from bitter ex-darlings of Harrowby to errant elder brothers returning to claim his title - all of these have to be dealt with by the ever-resourceful Minot. The joy of Love Insurance comes not from the twists and turns of its plot but rather the wicked turns of phrase and its lightning-quick one-liners.
There are too many absolute gems to be able to list them all here. Early on, I was in stitches at the description of the snail-paced train whose timetable was best described as a 'light work of fiction'. The journalist duo who find themselves improbably in charge of a newspaper are a wonderfully bracing pair of characters and indeed the supporting cast within this novel are superb. Mr Meyrick is the solemnly disapproving patriarch, highly suspicious of the brightly ineffective Lord Harrowby, while Cynthia's aunt does insist on rather swooning over the aristocracy. My personal favourite though was Jack Paddock who was eking out a living writing elegant conversation for fashionable hostesses, who therefore had to work to remember their lines which they were commended for delivering with such 'unconscious wit'. Minot, who is the only one in on the scam watches in silent amazement.
I could almost hear the jazz band playing the soundtrack in the background to Love Insurance as the characters ran around trying to get out of the latest scrape. I had only ever really experienced this era's cinema and now I feel as if I really ought to make an effort to discover more about the novels - I remembered all over again why I loved the old black and white romantic comedies. They are free of all of the vacuous desire to shock which makes so much of contemporary fiction such hard work. They have a humour which is hilarious without being patronising and there is a high-spirit behind them, an energy and an enthusiasm which has not yet been bogged down in a cynical search for commercial success. In short, despite its age, Love Insurance is as fresh as a daisy - I absolutely adored it - it made want to live in the 1920s in a way that The Great Gatsby never did.
For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/review-love-insurance-earl-derr-biggers.html
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