I recently finished reading Sir John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey. The witty and poetry-quoting protagonist of this book is Rumpole, a 68-year-old barrister who is a defense attorney for England's petty criminals. The novel is broken down into short stories about different cases that he has been involved in. This book is totally hilarious. The language is also quite pleasing - the book is full of nicely turned phrases. It reminds me a bit of Mr. Sammler's Planet, but is comic rather than existential. I highly recommend it!
I read this and a couple other compilations of Rumpole stories several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them! All light-hearted stuff, but I particularly enjoyed the general undercurrent of Rumpole's empathy for petty criminals (here depicted in rather sympathetic and no doubt somewhat unrealistic terms!) There was a BBC TV series made from the stories that was quite good and worth watching. The cover illustration of this book is a caricature of Leo McKern playing Rumpole in the TV series.
ReplyDeleteInteresting I will have to check out the show!
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