When we pick up with Mr. Topper and his wife, Mary Topper, they are in the South of France enjoying a holiday on the Riviera. After his adventure frolicking with ghosts and nearly becoming one himself in the last installment Cosmos Topper decides to take his wife on a vacation to the beaches of the French Riviera. He is hoping to rekindle his marriage and make up for his previous shenanigans. Mr. and Mrs. Kirby and their companions have been left far behind...or have they? While taking a bath Mr. Topper washes someone else's foot. And so it begin again. Only this time Mr. Topper's ghostly girlfriend decides he would be more fun as one of them. The only problem? Mr. Topper is still alive.
I have to admit there were some scenes so outrageous I was embarrassed to read them. I don't think I am spoiling the plot any by saying this, but when Mrs. Topper takes Marion's leg and swings it around like a weapon I cringed throughout the entire scene. It was beyond ridiculous. I can only imagine what the movie version was like.
But back to the plot. As I was saying, this time Topper's friends have missed him so much they want to make him one of them. Sound familiar? It's a repeat of the end of Topper when he crashes into the infamous tree. ( )

"A vast expanse of cool ocean as blue and virginal seeming as the garments adorning the figure then inspecting it from the balcon> of a discouragingly pale stucco villa set in a garden fairly bristling with grass of a repellent toughness -- grass so hostilely tough that only a rhinoceros could sit on it with any showing of dignity and aplomb. Unfortunately, as rhinoceroses are rarely if ever encountered in these drab days sitting on Riviera grass in Riviera gardens, this observation must of necessity remain merely one of those vast mental pictures upon which to dwell during the interminable reaches of a family reunion."

Thus the stage is set for this hilarious novel. Even better than (and quite different from) the movie with Constance Bennett and Roland Young! I laughed out loud multiple times while reading this and wanted to quote passages aloud to anyone nearby. ( )

From my younger days as a much older person in a younger person’s body I had some familiarity with the old Topper movies though if the reading of this book is any judge of such things my concept of what the movies were actually ABOUT might be more than a tad askew of reality.

Cosmo Topper is an average American bank executive on holiday in the French Riveria. He’s utterly normal in his generally loose moral fibre and unexceptional in most ways that are worth noting except that he happens to be plagued by the most curious company in the form of four ghosts which haunt his every step and send him on no end of random misadventures. One of the phantom quartet is bent on using Topper solely to supply a good time. Another of the foursome is Cosmo’s mistress and she’s bent on killing him so that they need not be bound by their differing status in the afterlife. The other two simply seem to go in whichever way the wind blows them (as the wispy and non-corporeal are wont to do anyway.)

The most noteable thing about Smith’s novel, aside from its utterly bizarre and original concept (it spawned several movies) is the twisted and writhing manner in which he writes. I realize, of course, that such a phrase coming from me is, at the least, a bit shocking. I look at my own prolix prose and see tendrils that are convoluted far beyond easy human comprehension but Smith makes me look like a grunting Neanderthal by comparison. Smith’s long and sometimes fruitless journeys into metaphor, combined with his copious use of French terms that are unknown to me makes him a real chore to sift through. This combined with the unfamiliar vernacular of the 1930s makes this one a tough nut. That said, if you can grind his prose down to its meaning, you have a good nut, but my attitude going into this was of a book to be easily tossed off in a couple of nights. It came to span four and not without some fair amount of dread when it came time to sit down and read. As example I give you the early description of Cosmo Topper:

Topper, it is to be learned with some relief, was virginal more through circumstance than choice. This does not imply that his was a low and lecherous nature. Nor does it necessarily follow that he was epicurean in such matters. But he did like things nice that way. Most men do, when and if possible.

Topper had been a banker by profession. He still was a husband–an original error of judgement unrectified by time. Habit is a dreadful thing. Once he had commuted without realizing the error of his ways. Most men commute through necessity. Topper had done so ritualistically. In Glendale, USA, the Toppers had been socially solid. All that was changed, but not through Mrs. Topper.
I’ll admit that even after having read the entire book and that exact passage several times, I’m still not EXACTLY sure I understand what he’s saying. At any rate, to the studious and focused reader, this book would no doubt be at least a small riot. Smith’s verbal wit is good though would have benefited from anything even remotely approaching a plot. Like an episode of The Stooges, one is left with the idea that something odd might have happened (one falls short of using the word ‘funny’) but without a common thread to bind events together the result is a handful of milkweed fluff. If nothing else, I suppose, I was amused to hear again the phrase “mon petit chou.” One can never have enough cabbage in one’s life. ( )

The mirthful Mediterranean holiday of a haunted man.