Toppleton's Client

MP3 Audio CD. Toppleton's Client by John Kendrick Bangs

John Kendricks Bangs is known to the general public for his work as editor for several comic and literary magazines, the author of humorous sketches and a poet. However, his work is much vaster than that, Toppleton?s Client being one of his lesser known writings, but one that shows Kendricks true comic genius and talent as a novelist at their best.

The protagonist of the novel is a naive young man who loses his body to a fiend and is forced to wonder around as a bodiless spirit ? a situation that in itself offers the writer many possibilities and certainly a situation that Bangs makes the most of. The spirit hires himself a lawyer to help him enter into the possession of his lost body again, but the usurper fiend is no easy enemy. Eventually, the usurper finds the lawyer?s body an even better place than the body he is currently inhabiting, so the story is getting more and more exciting.



The book comes with many elements inspired from the author?s life as well. Bangs himself was a lawyer who worked in his father?s law office, but he was neither interested in, nor very serious about what he was doing to make a living. The young lawyer in the novel is the son of one of the senior partners of a famous law firms, employed by the firm only to be able to keep the name Toppleton on the masterhead of the company, but the young man still manages to make his mark.