THE THORNE SMITH TRIPLETS Topper Takes a Trip, the Night Life of the Gods, the Bishop's Jaegers (Three Hilarious Hellions Under One cover)

Garden City: Sun Dial Press, 1942. (USA) 1st thus. No markings, slight toning of endpapers, Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket in mylar sleeve. Tea; green cloth, 325pp, 311pp,311pp, line drawings. Thorne Smith (died 1934) is best known today for the two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and ghosts. With racy illustrations, these sold millions of copies in the 1930s and were equally popular in paperbacks of the 1950s.The first Topper book was made into a movie starring Cary Grant. Topper Takes a Trip is a sequel. In The Night Life of the Gods (1931). Quirky inventor Hunter Hawk strikes gold when he invents a device enabling him to turn living matter into stone and to reverse the process at will. After a chaotic field test he meets stunning 900-year-old Megaera, who teaches him to turn stone into flesh. They and some friends set their sights on New York City to bring the Roman gods of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to life: Mercury shows himself an expert pickpocket, while Neptune causes chaos in the fish market.The Bishop's Jaegers (1932). The depressed, indifferent heir of a vast coffee import fortune, Peter Van Dyke finds his life and high society engagement turned upside down when his secretary, Josephine Duval, determines to “rescue” him by ruining him morally. After an amusing scandal in a coat closet, he is cast adrift in a fog with a motley crew that includes a bishop of the Episcopal Church and a former nude model named Aspirin Liz. The enterprising party lands unceremoniously on the shores of a naturist resort, and the liberation of the coffee importer is set in motion. Smith, in one of his few comic novels devoid of any element of the supernatural, assumes the reader would know that "Jaegers" refers to a union suit (men's long underwear) (2.5 JM HOX 403/0. 1st. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. Illus. by Roese. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾".