Ice in the Bedroom is a novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published as a book in the United States (where the title was The Ice in the Bedroom) on February 2, 1961 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom on October 15, 1961 by Herbert Jenkins, London.
The story was originally published, in a condensed version, in the November 5, 1960, issue of the Toronto Star Weekly.
It features several Wodehouse characters from earlier books, including Drones Freddie Widgeon and Oofy Prosser, and the trio of criminals, "Chimp" Twist and "Soapy" and "Dolly" Molloy.
The novel has two intertwined sub-plots. Freddie Widgeon, who wishes to marry Sally Foster, is seeking to escape from a dull job in a London office to become the manager of a coffee plantation in Kenya. Meanwhile, in the normally quiet suburb of Valley Fields, where Freddie is living, a cache of jewellery, hidden in the home of Freddie's neighbour, is attracting the attention of a small gang of petty criminals.
The story is essentially a re-working of Sam the Sudden (1925), which was also set in the fictional Valley Fields, had a sub-plot in which the same three crooks were hunting for hidden treasure, and entwined this with a romantic sub-plot.
Famous quotes containing the words ice in the, ice and/or bedroom:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The awaited scream rises,
the shattering
of glass and the cracking
of bone
a polar tumult as when
black ice booms....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“But a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down—very important traits in times like these. In fact, just as soon as a dog comes along who, in addition to these qualities, also knows when to buy and sell stocks, he can be moved right up to the boy’s bedroom and the boy can sleep in the dog house.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)