Here is a meeting with George and Marion Kerby, a couple of free-wheeling ghosts, who meet up with respectable banker Cosmo Topper. This was noted by the New York Times, claiming:
“Thorne Smith created the modern American ghost story, ghosts with style and wit; ghosts that haunt us still.”
Others pointed out, “Smith was a master of urbane wit and sophisticated repartee.”
The overall mood has a touch of silliness, but it provides lighthearted reading and listening, a matter of nonsensical escapism. For Topper it meant relief from a nagging wife with ongoing indigestion.
Smith himself was a heavy drinker and died of a heart attack at a youthful forty-two. Once, after an unexplained week-long disappearance, he was asked why he hadn’t called in sick. He replied, “The telephone was in the hall and there was a draft.”
Shall we listen to the escapades? Well, why not?
It all begins when Cosmo Topper, a law-abiding, mild-mannered bank manager, decides to buy a secondhand car, only to find it haunted by the ghosts of its previous owner, the reckless, feckless, frivolous couple who met their untimely demise when the car careened into an oak tree. The capricious ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, make it their mission to rescue Topper from his drab life. With their ectoplasmic reappearances and whimsically insane actions designed to disturb the inhibited banker's staid life, they leave Topper, and most else everyone, in a whirlwind of discomfiture and delight.
