Piccadilly Jim

When Jimmy Crocker -- a bit of a troublemaker, frankly -- finds the papers calling him "Piccadilly Jim" in his native England, and in a world of trouble otherwise, he decides to go to New York. En route, he meets a beautiful young woman and hears her talking to her family about what an awful person "that James Crocker" is. He decides to meet her by pretending to be someone else -- he makes a name up on the spur of the moment: Algernon Bayliss. But he's constantly running into people who recognize him as Crocker, and, worse still, the girl plans to pass "Algernon" off as Crocker to their shared aunt. (They aren't really related, but step-cousins through a second marriage.) And Jimmy finds himself pretending to be Algernon pretending to be Jimmy -- while trying to get this girl to fall in love with him. A classic tale of false identity; like much of Wodehouse, a classic of a very peculiar kind.