<p><strong>Following his infallible nose for unlikely situations </strong>Jerome K. Jerome sets himself a Herculean task as main character in his own novel: to fictionally compose another novel in collaboration with a trio of his pipe-party bachelor friends: Jephson Brown and MacShaughnassy. In the tradition of his Three Men in a Boat this might well have been entitled Four Men in a Pickle.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>