Very entertaining. If the characters weren't so charmingly Wodehouselike, you might call them frightful yuppies in the making. Still, they are very very funny.

The story is told in an intriguing and effective way; most of the characters are far away from the scene of the crime, they (and we) learn about developments via the postal service and the electric telephone, and the temporal offset of these various forms of communication is used very satisfyingly. One of the main characters we never meet in person.

Not long after the middle of the novel we are told by the garrulous yet curiously distant narrator that now all the necessary information to solve the crime has been presented, although the narrator at that point hadn't made the connections. Both of which is neat. Unfortunately, the solution itself at the end is rather far-fetched, and something of a letdown. But then, you don't read this mystery for the plot.