Publisher's Weekly
Butterworth (A Virgin on the Rocks begins this lighthearted caper quickly and keeps it spinning right to its neat end. In a London flophouse, Horace Bunbury, young ex-alcoholic and impoverished Oxonian, meets Capt. Thomas O'Leary, also young and poor and late of the Irish Guards. When Bunbury mentions that Texas billionaire George Sawtry wants to buy the Albert Memorial for $5 million, O'Leary's active brain kicks into high. Soon the Irishman has set up a couple of funding scams that enable him and Bunbury to move on to the major con-game. The Texan ``wins'' a hilarious auction and assigns our heroes to dismantle the ugly monument for shipping to the Lone Star state as a wedding present for the newest Mrs. Sawtry. Complications arise when the lady's legal husband appears and when a top London crook leaves jail bent on killing O'Leary to avenge an earlier scam. After many plot turns and much tearing around, the book climaxes with a car chase cum shootout. Most of the characters are stereotypes, but readers will enjoy this frothy charmer anyway.