P. G. Wodehouse and Rex Stout were contemporaries and friends, I recently learned.
The opening pages of Stout’s Champagne For One read like a Bertie Wooster story: an acquaintance known as Dinky, feigning laryngitis, rings to beg that the narrator take his place at an aunt’s annual dinner party.
Maybe it only seems more wodehousy than usual because I happen to have a Penguin edition, printed in a typeface that’s not used much on this side of the water (Plantin, a favorite of mine).
I would love to know if Wodehouse ever returned the compliment. I raised the question on StackExchange and replies were positively huffy at my reading any significance into these details.