"Excuse me, sirs," I feebly croaked out, "but Mr. Milo Overlock begs to detain you this afternoon, the purpose being this rather inconvenient death..." So says Grave, elderly and ever-hapless valet to that "icon of ego, demigod of duck and prefect of perfect," Milo Overlock, as another dreaded adventure unfolds before him. It is not enough that Grave, at seventy-five, must prepare six duck dinners a day or entertain his Master's ruthless pet mice, but to be embroiled in one Endeavor after another in which rich, powerful Mr. Overlock (all five-foot-ought and twenty stone of him) exercises an "ego as great as his intellect and patience as limited as his height." For those seeking a series of comedy-mysteries set in the fictional nineteenth-century kingdom of a megalomaniac and his manservant, the solution is a simple one. In short, Milo Overlock.