Résumé
Résumé de Une nuit merveilleuse
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who enjoy fast adventure with a smile in it, clever detectives, runaway brides, mistaken identities, and old New York by night. It suits anyone who likes a love story wrapped in a puzzle.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
One Wonderful Night is a comic mystery and romance by Louis Tracy, set mostly over one night in New York in November, in the years just before the First World War. It follows John Delancy Curtis, an American engineer who has spent ten years building railways in China and comes to New York for the first time since he was a baby. Within hours he sees a murder, picks up the wrong overcoat, and finds himself married to a stranger.
The book works like a clock, and many chapters are headed with the hour. Tracy mixes street fights, police work and a chase by car with a love story that begins as a legal trick. You get a New York of electric signs, grand hotels and crowded East Side streets, along with a cast of sharp detectives, scheming aristocrats and chatty relatives from Indiana.
This summary walks you through the night in order and stops before the ending. It also shows what the story is really about and how Tracy builds his comedy out of chance. Let us begin on the deck of the Lusitania, as the skyline comes into view.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A stranger comes home to New YorkFree
- 2A murder takes place outside the hotel
- 3A stranger carries sad news to Hermione
- 4The bargain and the hasty wedding
- 5Detectives, an earl and a tangle of names
- 6A wedding night spent in public
- 7A bound Frenchman and a midnight in East Broadway
- 8What the story is really about
- 9How the story is told
Point clé 1 sur 9
A stranger comes home to New York
The story opens on the deck of the liner Lusitania as she steams into New York harbor on a November afternoon. John Delancy Curtis stands at the rail beside Howard Devar, a cheerful young man of twenty who is the son of a canned salmon millionaire. Devar knows the city well. Curtis knows it only from maps, books and drawings, because he left it as a baby and has lived for years in China.
Tracy uses this talk to show a man full of feeling who keeps it under control. Curtis is firm and calm, the sort of man who has ruled workmen in wild country and expects to be obeyed. Yet when the passengers rush down to meet their families, he feels more alone than he did on the plains of Manchuria. He tells himself that the city is his birthright too, and he decides to stay at the Central Hotel on West 27th Street because that is where he was born.
Devar is called away by an aunt and two cousins, and Curtis passes through the customs shed with no one to greet. A taxi takes him down the newly rebuilt West Street to the hotel, which has grown into a tall, narrow tower with a porter dressed like an archduke. The clerk gives him room 605 and promises it is quiet and comfortable.
Tracy lets us know that the room is anything but safe. A golf bag leans against the wardrobe, a window is open, and a small chain of accidents is about to begin. Curtis dresses for dinner, leaves his letters to be posted, and steps into the corridor just as the door locks behind him with his key still inside.
So the hero begins the evening as a tourist with a small problem. He buys stamps at the cigar counter and is jostled by a dark foreign man who apologizes in French. He eats a good dinner, drinks a little champagne and a glass of green liqueur, and waits for a friend who does not come. Nothing yet suggests that this is anything but a quiet homecoming.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Une nuit merveilleuse
What is One Wonderful Night about?
It is about John Delancy Curtis, who comes home to New York after years in China, sees a murder outside his hotel, and marries a runaway earl's daughter the same night. A detective story and a romance follow.
Who is Jean de Courtois in One Wonderful Night?
He is the French music teacher whom Lady Hermione has paid to marry her in name only. His name is on the marriage license that Curtis finds, and Curtis uses it to take his place at the wedding.
Why does the story take place in one night?
Tracy builds the book around the clock, with chapter titles such as Eight O'Clock and Midnight. Most of the action fits into one night, which lets chance, mistaken names and the chase move quickly, and gives the story its sense of speed.
Is One Wonderful Night a true story?
No, it is fiction. Louis Tracy wrote it as a light mystery and romance, with real New York places such as Broadway, the Plaza Hotel and East Broadway, in the years before the First World War.
Is One Wonderful Night easy to read?
Yes, it reads easily. The plot moves fast, chapters are short and many are labeled with the hour. The dialogue is lively, the humor is plain, and the detectives explain their clues clearly as the night goes on.