'ER, or the Brassbound Beauty, The Bearded Bicyclist, and the Gold-Colored Teen-Age Grandfather

Who is 'ER? What is she? A medieval beauty whose likeness was carved on a brass burial plate back in the 14th century... Switch to the 1960's.   The lady is still snugly interred at the bottom of what is now an English garden attached to a rented house in the sleep town of Poke-on-Thames. Along comes a schoolteacher-archaeology buff fresh out of St. Louis, Missouri, who exhumes her from a bed of dahlia corms. The discovery--a rare and valuable find--sets off a chain of events that shatters the town's perennial tranquility to its staid foundations.   Others are also caught up in this zany caper--a hustling American businessman, a slum-born pop singer on the wane, the rich, amorous queen of Poke-on-Thames' American colony, and a motley parade of juicy English locals. Everything explodes in a farcical, slapstick climax that leaves Poke-on-Thames reeling.   With funny-man Shepherd Mead calling the turns, it adds up to a hilariously good-natured spoof of all the English classes (including government bureaucrats), archaeology aficionados, expatriated Americans and anything else in the line of fire.   'Er  crackles with the same sense of free-wheeling fun that made Mead's earlier book,  How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying , a comic classic.