Review of David Ellis's The Last Alibi

The Last Alibi by David Ellis

On Thursday, Della Streetwise will tell you about some sure-fire scares for Halloween. She'll also include some titles for those whom the name "Stephen King" inspires a mad scramble for the exit. Today, I have a suspenseful book that kept me up late, turning pages to see what in the world was going on and how it all would end. It doesn't pit its hero against rampaging zombies, a deadly virus, or a crazed killer. (Well, okay, sorta that last one; but, not in a way you'd expect, even after you read my review.) It takes place day-by-day in a Chicago murder trial. Flashbacks to six months earlier interrupt the trial and count down to the present, so we see how Jason Kolarich comes to sit at the defendant's table, and not in his usual role of defense attorney. Early on, Jason tells us he'll probably testify, but he's not sure if it will be enough to establish reasonable doubt. He's sure of only one thing—that when he testifies, he will not tell the truth.

Jason, a former college football player, was a prosecutor before he joined his best friend, Shauna Tasker, in Tasker & Kolarich. Now in his 30s, he grew up with his brother Pete in a dysfunctional home, where "Dad volcanoes" made conflict avoidance an art form. Jason still dislikes conflict in his personal life, but he lives for it in the courtroom. We first meet him in 2009's The Hidden Man, when he defends a man accused of a revenge killing; by then, Jason had already won fame involving a case of high-office political corruption, detailed in Breach of Trust. (Note: Edgar Award-winning author and lawyer Ellis prosecuted and convicted Governor Rod Blagojevich in the sensational 2009 impeachment trial before the Illinois Senate.) Last year, Jason took on the murder defense of a homeless Iraq war vet in The Wrong Man.

Now, in The Last Alibi (August 2013, Putnam), Jason hasn't been himself since blowing out his knee while running earlier in the year. Out of court, his life is a shipwreck. He's beginning to feel like a shill; even if he gets his clients off once, sooner or later, they'll find themselves behind prison bars. Shauna and Joel Lightner, the firm's private eye, say Jason looks like shit and wonder what the heck is wrong with him.

This is the Jason who begins to court the beguiling court reporter, Alexa Himmel. It's also the Jason who eyes an odd-looking new client and doesn't know what to make of him. Recently, two women James Drinker knows have been found, stabbed to death. Drinker says he didn't kill them, but he's afraid he'll be arrested. In fact, Drinker wonders if he's being framed and asks Jason how he'd go about framing somebody. Jason helpfully mentions a few things he'd do. Then he suggests Drinker go to the police before they come to him.

But Drinker doesn't want to go to the police. As more women die in a similar way, Jason begins to suspect that his client is killing them; yet, he can't ethically report his suspicions. Inevitably, Jason comes to wonder just who is framing whom.

You don't need to be a fan of courtroom dramas or legal thrillers to appreciate The Last Alibi, although there's plenty here for such fans to love. For Jason, a trial means war. It's not so much that he loves to win as that he hates to lose. It's a pleasure to learn his insider's view of the courtroom's characters and what he thinks of the prosecution's strategy and witnesses' testimony. While Jason's attorney, Shauna, is conscientious and competent, she's not highly experienced in homicide cases, and Jason often overrules her proposed strategy. Even so, he tells us he wouldn't consider anyone else defending him. The reader only incrementally understands his defense, as Jason and Shauna slowly reveal the legal strategy and what happened before trial.

I really like series regulars Jason and Shauna, who both narrate. I feel I have a handle on what makes them tick, and on the motivations of the other characters, too. Writer Ellis does a superb job of unexpectedly yanking the plot this way and that, and of heightening suspense with the hints Jason drops and Shauna's self-revelations. Inside and outside of the courtroom, The Last Alibi thrills. It's a perfect fall or winter read. Get comfy, because you won't want to put down this diabolical legal thriller before you're finished.

Pandora's Box of Sorting Books

Summer is a good time to give the house a sweep. Books are taking over and some must leave. Others must go back onto shelves. Sorting takes all my will power because the temptation to sit down and read is almost overwhelming. Here are some of the books I've already sorted.

One of the characters in T. Jefferson Parker's The Fallen notes that a man's life can change in a moment. Something happens and life is divided into what went before and what comes after. For Det. Robbie Brownlaw, it's a fall from a six-story building. Afterward, he can see colored shapes that give away a speaker's emotional state. His ability to detect lies comes in handy when Robbie looks into the death of Garrett Asplundh, a member of the San Diego Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit that investigates corruption in civic leaders. Garrett was killed shortly before a meeting with his estranged wife, Stella.

In addition to Robbie, many of The Fallen's other characters have fallen in a life-altering way. Into a swimming pool, prey, in and out of love, from grace, into depression, from moral uprightness, under someone's thumb. Twenty-nine-year-old Robbie, who narrates this standalone, would make a great series protagonist because he's honest and insightful. We grow close to characters Robbie and Garrett as the murder investigation proceeds. I loved this book and I'll give it away so someone else will enjoy it too.

Mary Webb's Precious Bane, beautifully written in a Shropshire dialect, transports a reader to life in rural Shropshire in the early 1800s. Narrator Prue Sarn deals with the social awkwardness created by her cleft lip, while her greedy brother Gideon, who "eats" his father's sins at his funeral in order to take over the Sarn farm and house, bowls over anyone who stands between him and money. Reading Webb is more fun than Thomas Hardy. This is the 1924 book that inspired Stella Gibbons' blackly comic Cold Comfort Farm, and I'm lending them both to a friend.

Sometimes airplane reading demands characters who constantly chase each other around, like those in Once a Spy by Keith Thomson. It's narrated by Charlie Clark, a gambler who spends 364 days a year at Aqueduct Racetrack and is deep in debt to a Ukrainian heavy. Charlie very rarely sees his father, Drummond, but now Charlie gets a call from a social worker because Drummond is wandering around the snowy Brooklyn streets in his pajamas. Although Charlie thinks Drummond retired from a job selling washing machines, Drummond was actually a crack American spy. (The washing machine salesman/spy is homage to Graham Greene's vacuum cleaner salesman/spy in Our Man in Havana.) Drummond suffers from dementia and is under surveillance by the NSA, because his old colleagues are worried that he may leak top secrets.

Drummond isn't a "cranky old geezer" like some characters Sister Mary Murderous mentioned here. Instead, he's a sweetly forgetful man with startling periods of lucidity, brought about by deadly danger, in which he turns into a James Bond figure. Charlie and Drummond hit the road, pursued by spooks. It's nonstop action and double crosses but Drummond and Charlie now have a chance to build the father-son relationship that Drummond's career made impossible. Into the giveaway box this goes.

Michael Underwood is the pen name of John Michael Evelyn, who drew on his own career in writing his legal mysteries. I like his 1981 standalone book, Hand of Fate, which begins with the facts of the case against Frank Wimble, accused of killing his wife. There isn't much evidence, only a skeletal hand bearing a wedding ring. The puzzle is put together piece by piece in the courtroom.

I like to re-read my old British mysteries when I can't settle on what to read. This one isn't action packed. It's for times when you want reassurance that the world is a civilized place where reason and logic prevail. Back onto the shelf.

My sorting and packing will take forever and will be undone by new additions. Is anyone capable of quickly sorting books? Please share your methods.

Books Caught between the Tides

Summer takes on a predictable rhythm where I live. College students go home, but my own daughter and her friends attending out-of-town schools return and then drift in and out of our house like a tide. Between day jobs and night hikes, dinners at home and beach barbecues with friends, movies at the Fremont and downtown farmer's markets, sometimes my daughter and I find the time to bump into each other while we're reading.

In her older brother's bedroom, where we very, very gingerly borrow some books:

She helped herself to Philip K. Dick's Ubik. Her take: "A mind-blowing, original book. It was written in 1969, set in a future 1992, when the world has many mind-readers. A security agency called Runciter Associates provides 'anti-talents' to counter them. Joe Chip, an anti-psi, is on the moon when a job goes wrong. It's about reality and hallucination, paranoia, death, the nature of time, drug abuse. Dick does an incredible job of controlling what you know and when."

For me, David Corbett's 2003 book, Done for a Dime. Like writer Richard Price, who examines Dempsy, New Jersey; Corbett surveys the fictional cheap-rent town of Rio Mirada, California. Raymond "Strong" Carlisle, a black jazz musician, is found shot dead in his front yard. A disparate trio of Rio Mirada cops—Murchison, Holmes, and Stluka—investigate. It's fun finding elements of classic hardboiled writers Hammett, Cain, and Macdonald in this riveting noir book.

Most recent book read in the car:

Hers was John Grisham's The King of Torts. "You can't read too many Grisham books before they start blending together, but this one, about class-action lawsuits, is different. Clay Carter, a Washington, DC public defender, is talked into opening his own law firm by a guy named Max Pace, and then Pace feeds him one juicy lawsuit after another. Carter becomes ultra-wealthy, but he isn't happy without the woman he loves. You learn about class-action law and the lawyers who get rich bringing suit, and, if you didn't already know it, you learn that money doesn't buy happiness."

Mine? Robert Littell's head-spinning book of comic espionage, Legends. Brooklyn private-eye Martin Odum, a retired CIA spook, has assumed so many fake identities ("legends"), he no longer knows who he really is. In standard crime-fiction fashion, a beautiful dame—the Israeli daughter of an old Russian KGB agent—needs his help. Odum must find her missing huband so she can divorce him. The CIA warns Odum not to take the job, but does he listen? Are you kidding me?

Out on the deck, with a plate of cookies and a glass of iced tea:

My daughter sat down with End of Story by Peter Abrahams. "Suspend your disbelief for this one, which is filled with great characters, especially bartender Ivy Seidel, who dreams of quitting her job for a writing career. She begins teaching creative writing at Dannemora Prison in Upstate New York and is mesmerized by convict Vance Harrow, a highly talented writer, imprisoned for a violent crime. Ivy doubts Harrow's guilt and digs into his life before prison. The suspense becomes almost unendurable. "

Maurizio de Giovanni's I Will Have Vengeance, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel, and set in Mussolini's Italy, was my accompaniment to a cookie and tea. Pensive Commissario Luigi Ricciardi has an unusual ability: he can "see" a homicide victim's final moments. He'll put this gift to good use investigating the death of famous tenor Arnaldo Vezzi, who is stabbed to death in his dressing room before a performance of Pagliacci. Vezzi was a narcissistic jerk, so there are plenty of happy suspects. For you murder-at-the-opera fans, another one to join such books as Donna Leon's Death at La Fenice and Robert Barnard's Death on the High C's.

I hope the rhythms of your summer find you relaxing with a good book.

International Waffle Day

Yes, folks, March 25th is International Waffle Day. Observing this holiday means eating waffles for breakfast or waffling about decisions or issues. Or reading books in which characters do these things.

Andrew Pyper: Lost Girls (2000). An astonishingly fun and thought-provoking read narrated by a cynical, cocaine-snorting, and Keats-spouting Bartholomew Crane of Toronto's criminal law firm Lyle, Gederow & Associate (better known as "Lie, Get 'Em Off & Associate"). Teacher Thom Tripp is accused of murdering two teenage girls, whose bodies haven't been found, and Crane travels to the decrepit North Country town of Murdoch to take on his defense. There, Crane's usual disregard of the truth and own little-remembered past get a workout as he investigates his client's bizarre story of the girls' disappearance at Lake St. Christopher.

This literary legal mystery/psychological suspense/thriller is Canadian lawyer Pyper's debut novel. It has a nice touch of the frightening supernatural and an entertainingly acerbic lawyer/sleuth. Lost Girls was a New York Times Notable Book and won the 2000 Edgar and Arthur Ellis Awards for Best First Novel.

Peter Guttridge: City of Dreadful Night (2010). Whether you'll enjoy this complex and compelling book, the first in Guttridge's Brighton series, all depends. Can you handle a plot's coincidence and the ambiguity of a tale left dangling at the end? If you can, and you like gritty British police procedurals set in the present, but that take a look at an unsolved real-life crime in the past, this may be something for you.

An armed police raid at a house in Brighton and Hove, a seaside resort in East Sussex, England, goes wrong, and four people are killed. Chief Constable Robert Watts is forced to resign, and his marriage ends when his affair with DS Sarah Gilchrist, who participated in the raid, becomes known. Despite his superiors' warnings to back off, Watts digs into the web of political and criminal relationships behind the botched raid and the deaths in its aftermath. Meanwhile, a diary related to an unclosed 1934 case, in which parts of a woman's body were discovered in trunks left at Brighton railroad stations, surfaces and may involve Watts's father, a former cop, and the father of Watts's old friend and government fixer, William Simpson. Helping Watts investigate are DS Gilchrist; a young reporter named Kate Simpson, who is William Simpson's daughter; and James Tingley, Watts's old MI5 friend. I'm looking forward to seeing these characters again in the next series book, 2011's The Last King of Brighton.

Rex Stout: Too Many Women (1947). Private eye extraordinaire Nero Wolfe considers Archie Goodwin an expert on young women. So when the president of Naylor-Kerr, Inc. asks Wolfe to investigate rumors about Wally Moore's hit-and-run death that are distracting his employees, Wolfe sends Archie to work undercover as an efficiency expert in the engineering firm's warehouse, which is full of beautiful young women. Although Archie goes through these obstructive women like a dolphin goes through waves, Wolfe doesn't decide to close the investigation before several more people die. It's an enjoyable mystery, as well as an interesting look at women in the post-WWII workforce.

Stout's Nero Wolfe books form an utterly charming traditional series, a slice of Americana set from its beginning in 1934 with Fer-de-Lance, to its conclusion, A Family Affair, in 1975. (An omnibus of earlier novellas, Death Times Three, was published in 1985.) Its main characters––Nero Wolfe, a gourmet food-, books-, and orchids-loving brainiac of a detective who refuses to leave his Manhattan brownstone on business, and Archie Goodwin, his competent right-hand man of action––are supported by a great cast of regulars who include Wolfe's household help, several New York City cops, a band of self-employed detectives hired by Wolfe, the doctor next door, and Archie's lovely inamorata, Lily Rowan. Stout supposedly published his first drafts, and the writing has a casual elegance and spontaneity that's fun to read.

Philipp Meyer: American Rust (2009). Sister Mary Murderous had no sooner reminded me of this book when I saw Meyer's The Son appear on Publishers Weekly's list of most anticipated books for Spring 2013. I'm not waffling when I say this: American Rust is wonderful.

It's set in the same economically devastated Pennsylvania country as K. C. Constantine's first-rate Mario Balzic series (see Maltese Condor's review of Constantine's The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes here). Buell's steel mill is shuttered, and many people have moved away. Isaac English and his older sister, Lee, were the smartest kids in their high school. When Lee goes to Yale, Isaac is left to take care of their disabled father. Now Lee is married and gone for good, and Isaac is desperate to leave Buell for his dream of studying astrophysics in California. Early one morning, Isaac packs his books into a backpack, robs his father's desk of $4,000, and walks to the house of his best friend Billy Poe. Billy is a none-too-smart, hot-tempered ex-high school football star on probation for assault. The two set out on foot. A chance meeting with transients in an abandoned factory where Isaac and Billy take shelter from a snowstorm leaves a man dead and Isaac's dream in pieces.

Meyer has been compared to John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and William Faulkner. American Rust is about the unraveling of the American Dream. With beautiful prose, Meyer examines the price of loyalty and the constrained choices suffered by the working class. The book's characters––especially Isaac; Billy's self-sacrificing mother Grace, who earns minimum wage sewing wedding dresses for the wealthy and has her own dreams of returning to college; and Grace's lover, the sheriff––are three-dimensional enough to break your heart.

Lachlan Smith: Bear Is Broken (2013, Mysterious Press/Grove). Leo Maxwell has just received notice that he passed the California bar exam. He hopes the days of being called "Monkey Boy" by his 12-years-older brother, Teddy, are now a thing of the past. Teddy hasn't even congratulated Leo when they walk into a San Francisco restaurant to have lunch before closing arguments in one of Teddy's trial cases. Teddy is a highly successful criminal defense attorney, beloved by San Francisco's criminal class, but reviled by its cops and prosecutors, who insist that his success must be based on bribes and perjury. Leo and Teddy are waiting for their order when someone walks up behind Leo, shoots Teddy in the head, and disappears into a waiting car. While Teddy lies in a coma, Leo tries to understand his enigmatic brother, who was responsible for him after their mother died when Leo was 10 years old. Just how much of a rogue is Teddy? Leo now deals with Teddy's ex-wife, investigator, and clients. He also decides he can't trust the cops to adequately pursue the attempted murderer, so he will investigate himself. Leo opens Pandora's box.

Like Canadian writer Andrew Pyper, Lachlan Smith is a lawyer, and following his legal sleuth in the courtroom and in his sleuthing is enlightening as well as entertaining. Bear Is Broken is much less literary than Pyper's Lost Girls, and Leo is much less cynical than Pyper's Barth Crane, but both books involve a young lawyer's coming of age and evoke a tragic past. In this debut novel, Smith writes with unusual clarity and assurance as Leo shuffles a deck of likely suspects and plays a game of Solitaire. Smith slows the denouement a bit with a few too many details, but this by no means spoils the book's worth. I really liked it for its close and compassionate look at the tragic consequences of crime and at a San Francisco attorney who learns about himself and the nature of family loyalties. I'm happy that this is the first book of a proposed series.

On this important day, when we honor waffles and waffling, especially in crime fiction, be sure to get your fill of both. You may need to decline a second serving of breakfast, but there's nothing to stop you from being a glutton in your reading.

"Go to Heaven for the Climate, Hell for the Company" (Mark Twain)

Use your imagination to populate this picture of Heaven

Mark Twain must have spent a lake vacation with my family, our friends and miscellaneous pets. As soon as we got out of the cars and smelled the water, we all ran completely wild. It was so much fun. There is nothing like spending time with friends and family you love. The books I read during the past few weeks have characters with special relationships, too. Let me tell you about some of them.

Author Edward Conlon's dad, grandfather and uncle were cops. Conlon graduated from Harvard, but his blood runs cop-uniform blue and he became a NYPD detective. Red on Red is his first novel and it's a doozy; a literary book you don't have to be a mystery fan to love. It's about two NYPD detectives, protagonist Nick Meehan and "Espo" Esposito, who became partners five months earlier. Nick, desperate for a transfer, agreed to take a look at Espo for the Internal Affairs Bureau. The two men are very different, but a close relationship or good partnership doesn't have to begin with a likeness, a shared past or shared tastes. It can begin with unlikeness that leads to thrilling epiphanies of jokes and actions one wouldn't have thought of but the other one did. During the first night a reader spends with them, they discover an unidentifiable woman hanging from a tree in the rain at Inwood Hill Park. The mysterious witness who called the cops and the odd scene appeal to Nick, who likes cases with "funny things or lucky things, glimpses of archaic wonder and terror, where life seemed to have a hidden order, a rhyme." They are also called to the scene of a shotgun victim, probably the result of a drugs turf war, that the aggressive and competitive Espo will handle. Espo and Nick accidentally cause a death to round out their shift. Fabulous characterization, setting, plot, humor and insight. I can't recommend this 2011 book, nominated for an Edgar First Novel, highly enough.

William Landay's Defending Jacob is set among the Barber family. Andy Barber couldn't believe his luck when Laurie, his dream girl, married him. He's happy at home and at the DA's office in Newton, Massachusetts, where he's been the top assistant DA for more than 20 years. When 14-year-old Ben Rifkin is found, stabbed to death on his walk to school, Andy expects to prosecute the case. These plans are turned upside down when Andy's son, Jacob, is accused of the crime. Jacob says he is innocent and Andy insists that it's his duty as a father to believe him. Laurie, reeling from the criminal charges against Jacob and the flabbergasting revelations from Andy, isn't so sure. This book has been described as a Greek tragedy. I'll say. It's both thought-provoking and suspenseful. Author Landay is a former district attorney and a Dagger Award-winner for Mission Flats. Defending Jacob, published in 2012 by Delacorte, is his third outstanding non-series novel. If you like books by Scott Turow, you'll like this one.

Austalian writer Garry Disher's Port Vila Blues was originally published in 1995 and will be re-released by Soho Crime tomorrow. In a nutshell, here's the scoop. Wyatt, a cool-headed career thief, has once again joined forces with his old crime-planner and trusted friend, Jardine. Six months earlier, Jardine was grazed by a bullet above his ear, suffered a stroke and hasn't been the same since. He directs Wyatt to a house with a stash of cash. Along with the cash, Wyatt finds a diamond-studded Tiffany brooch. He and Jardine then seek a fence. Unknown to them, the brooch was stolen before. When its original thieves hear it's turned up again, they assume someone among them is cheating the rest. This is not a comfortable state of affairs because they are very enterprising and ruthless corrupt cops. They set out to investigate their fellow friends-in-crime and Jardine and Wyatt. Port Vila Blues, the fifth in the Wyatt series, is set in various cities of Australia and on the island of Vanuatu. I'm not sure why it reminds me of those old Spy Versus Spy cartoons in Mad Magazine. It's not a book of espionage. Maybe because of the murderous scheming and betrayals among colleagues and friends. Chasing the determined crooks are determined cops. The book's ending makes me anxious to read others in this series, especially the next, The Fallout.

Shawn Maguire is ex-CIA. He was kicked out for his violent behavior, his insufficiently brown-nose-ish attitude and his drinking. He's now living in rural England so he can be near the grave of his wife. Other than attending meetings for sex addicts and running out of money, he's not doing much. An arms dealer asks him to look into the disappearance of Darius Osmani, whom the CIA suspects of being a Middle Eastern terrorist with information about a nuclear device. Although he hopes to be reinstated in the CIA, Maguire agrees to accept this freelance job. He heads to Paris, where he meets Osmani's beautiful wife, Danielle Baptiste. This isn't a thriller of blood-pressure-raising action, although Maguire and Danielle track Osmani, who's being flown from one black hole to another, courtesy of the CIA. Instead, it's a look at Maguire's history as a CIA operative in the Middle East during the war, CIA renditions and the short-sighted American practice of throwing money at problems and taking a hand in other countries' elections. The flashbacks within flashbacks can get a little confusing. Maybe that's appropriate. In Gerard Macdonald's The Prisoner's Wife, published in May 2012 by Dunne/St. Martin's, it's confusing to figure out who's a friend and who's an enemy, because sometimes it depends on the time and place. I enjoyed the quietly beautiful writing and Maguire, an appealing and complex protagonist. I hope to see him again soon.

There you go. I enjoyed my time at the lake with family and friends. After reading these books, I realized how lucky I am not to worry about which friends might sell me out or try to kill me. I don't suspect my kids of any serious crimes and I doubt my husband will drop a bomb on me. Now I hope you'll read these books in a heavenly place and the hellishly good company of the fictional characters will kindle your enjoyment.

Home again and needing a vacation

It Oughta Be a Law

I'm a mostly-retired lawyer. When I began practicing law in 1985, it was at a big firm, just at the start of the go-go era. The law practice soon became all about billing the maximum number of hours possible, accounting for every minute of the day, working long days six days a week and never feeling like my time was my own. (I know, I know, you're just overcome with sympathy for lawyers.)

I blame the concept of law as a business, which became popular at that time, and which displaced the notion of law as a learned profession. As a result of my experiences, I don't have much interest in legal mysteries. It's sort of like that old saw about how you'll never eat sausage again once you've seen how they're made. But there is one exception to my aversion toward legal mysteries: I'm a sucker for British mysteries about lawyers practicing in the good old days. Why? Let me count the ways.

Trials are over in nothing flat.

This makes life a lot easier for lawyers. I do see, though, that it's not necessarily such a bonus for the parties in interest, especially defendants. Take Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison, for example. Harriet Vane is on trial for killing her lover, Philip Boyes, and it looks like she is only days away from a date with the hangman. Fortunately, Lord Peter Wimsey's sometime agent, Miss Climpson, is on the jury and she holds out against the other jurors' guilty verdict. The hung jury gives Lord Peter the time to find the real culprit and save Harriet's neck.

A defendant lucky enough to be a member of the House of Lords could escape the potential pitfalls of the British criminal court system by demanding a trial by his peers; which, in that case, meant Peers of the Realm. The law was changed in 1948, but when Lord Peter's brother, the Duke of Denver, was accused of murder in Clouds of Witness, the law was still in force. The trial in the House is quite a scene, with 300 members of the House of Lords entering the chamber two by two, wearing robes with ermine rows on their shoulders. Instead of a drab bailiff droning out the particulars of the charge, the Sergeant-At-Arms and the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery hand around a Commission and a Staff of Office and then read the Certiorari and Return, including a "long, sonorous rigmarole" that ends in the reading of the charge of murder against "the most noble and puissant prince Gerald Christian Wimsey, Viscount St. George, Duke of Denver, a Peer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

Whew! After all that, the trial is almost an anticlimax. But when Sir Impey Biggs (one of the great character names) gives his final speech for the defense, he not only asks for a finding of Not Guilty, but notes that with it will come the restoration to the Duke of the "traditional symbols of his exalted rank." I suppose that means that he gets back his nobility and his puissance, whatever that means.

British barristers and judges wear nifty wigs and robes.

Having a bad hair day? Not a problem if you're a barrister or judge. Just pop on your wig and nobody will ever know. And those robes will hide gravy stains, missing buttons and any number of other crimes against fashion. Of course, some lawyers are less likely to need the camouflage than others. Frances Fyfield created the character of Helen West who, like herself, has a career as a lawyer for the Metropolitan Police and, later, for the Crown Prosecution Service. Although Helen deals with some very gritty crimes and many deeply dubious individuals, she is no fashion criminal. Some of Fyfield's award-winning Helen West novels include A Question of Guilt, Not That Kind of Place and Deep Sleep.

British court rules allow judges to question witnesses and to comment on the evidence to the jury.

Wouldn't this make being a judge a thousand times more fun than it is in the US in the present day? It would be like being Judge Judy, only for real––and with higher-toned rhetoric and better costumes. Although I think this judicial ability to shoot your mouth off whenever you want would make being a judge much more appealing to the kind of ego-driven person who is drawn to the law (yes, I said it), that power doesn't seem to make it all that worthwhile to some British judges. Take the poor Magistrate in Henry Cecil's Settled Out of Court, who is having a bad morning with a particularly full-of-himself and long-winded barrister named Tewkesbury:

MR. TEWKESBURY: Now, officer, I want you to follow this next question very closely.
CONSTABLE: I try to follow all your questions closely.
TEWKESBURY: And to what measure of success?
MAGISTRATE: You needn't answer that question.
TEWKESBURY: But, sir, with the greatest possible respect, am I not entitled to an answer?
MAGISTRATE: No.
TEWKESBURY: But, sir, unless I know the measure of success which the officer has in following my questions, it becomes more difficult for me to frame the next question.
MAGISTRATE: So far you seem to have overcome your difficulties most manfully. I have observed no lack of questions.
TEWKESBURY: Your Worship's courtesy overwhelms me.
MAGISTRATE (to himself): I wish it would.
TEWKESBURY: Is it now convenient, sir, that I should resume my cross-examination where I left off?
MAGISTRATE: Very well.
TEWKESBURY: Well then, officer, would you be kind enough to tell me the measure of success with which you have understood my previous questions?
MAGISTRATE: I've just said he needn't answer that question.
TEWKESBURY: But, sir, did I not understand you to change your mind and say that I may ask it? If I may say so, the greatest judges change their minds. Judex mutabilis, judex amabilis, if I may say so.
MAGISTRATE: Mr. Tewkesbury, would you kindly continue your cross-examination of this witness? I've fifty summonses to hear after this.
TEWKESBURY: I don't know how your Worship does it and retains your good humour.
MAGISTRATE (quietly, to his clerk): I've about had enough of this. Is he sober?

Georgette is a devotée of Henry Cecil's books and, doubtless, could contribute many more stories about judges and lawyers in Cecil's world.

John Mortimer's Horace Rumpole is of the view that judges seem to live only to undermine him by interrupting his witness examination in order to inject their own probing questions and by casting aspersions on his arguments when they give instructions to the jury. It's clearly a wonderful power for the judge, but not so much for its target, Rumpole. In the story "Rumpole on Trial," Rumpole complains that one of his regular nemeses, Judge "Ollie" Oliphant, sighs and rolls his eyes when Rumpole sums up the case for the defense and responds to Rumpole's arguments by telling the jury: "Of course, you can believe that if you like, Members of the Jury, but use your common sense, why don't you?"

British coroners have a power similar to judges to guide the outcome of cases. In Colin Watson's Flaxborough novels, longtime Coroner Albert Amblesby conducts inquests with an iron fist and a lot of sardonic comment. You get the impression that nothing ever happens in an inquest that isn't orchestrated by Amblesby. If you haven't read any Flaxborough novels, give Lonelyheart 4122 a try first. I think it's the funniest, and it features one of the great side characters in crime fiction, the deceptively genteel-appearing con-woman Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime.

Legal research was a piece of cake.

Statutes, regulations, administrative rulings, case precedents and all manner of legal authorities can take forever to slog through. The amount of material increases at a dizzying pace. But in Delano Ames's She Shall Have Murder, published in 1948 (see a full review at the end of this post), it was a much simpler matter. Law clerk Jane Hamish goes into the office of solicitor and senior partner Mr. Playfair to ask him about a matter of company law. Playfair responds: "In answer to Sir John's inquiry, Miss Hamish, quote to him paragraph twelve of the Companies Act of 1929. You'll find it in the fifth volume on the left there on the top shelf, page 116." Just imagine having all the law you need, right there in your office and, apparently, memorizable.

Speaking of cake, how about the snacks in the office?

I don't want to sound like a whiner, but our idea of a snack at the office was some scorched coffee from the Bunn-O-Matic, a candy bar from the newsstand downstairs or, if you could spare a little more time, a dash out to the coffee shop for a cookie. But in these old British mysteries, the lawyers seem to spend almost as much time taking breaks for tea, coffee and biscuits as they do working.

When I was reading She Shall Have Murder, it seemed like I was always hungry. It must have something to do with the fact that the staff spent so much time in the kitchen, boiling up hot water for tea, getting plates of buns and biscuits, opening tins of sardines and making sandwiches.

Forget the snacks, how about the drinks?

Even better than always having tea and biscuits in the office, the lawyers go out for long lunches, always seem to have a bottle of sherry (or something stronger) in their cupboards and, by 5:00 pm, you can usually find them propping up the bar at their favorite watering hole. In Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar series, the lawyers at 62 New Square seem to think that being "called to the Bar" means the siren song of their local wine bar, the Corkscrew, where they crack open bottles of Nierstein as often as they crack open law books.

Horace Rumpole, the most famous tippling barrister, can be found most evenings at Pommeroy's Wine Bar, a glass of what author John Mortimer calls Chateau Fleet Street or Chateau Thames Embankment in hand. I never thought about it before, but it does seem that in crime fiction, English lawyers drink wine, while police detectives seem to prefer beer and whisky. Is it a class thing or does it just go with the job? Maybe I should check and see what Elizabeth George's Thomas Lynley drinks. (I think wine, but I'm not sure.) Lynley is both a police detective and the 8th Earl of Asherton, so his choice of tipple might be something of an indicator whether the British character's drink of choice is based on class or profession. Or, maybe not, since Elizabeth George is an American.

* * *

Reading these books could just about ruin the practice of law for anybody trying to do the job these days. Hmm. Maybe I'll forward some of these books to some of today's law-as-a-business types and show them how much more fun it was (and could be?) to practice law as a learned profession.

If you'd like to read other classic mysteries featuring British lawyers, here are some suggestions:

Cyril Hare's Francis Pettigrew series, beginning with Tragedy At Law

Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale series

R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke series

Michael Underwood's Rosa Epton series

Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair

Michael Gilbert's Smallbone Deceased, Death Has Deep Roots, The Crack In the Teacup and Flash Point

Agatha Christie's "Witness For the Prosecution" (and the film of the same name, starring Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power and Elsa Lanchester)

Check out this annotated edition
from Manor Minor Press!

Review of Delano Ames's She Shall Have Murder

There are few things I enjoy more than a good, old-fashioned British puzzle mystery. The kind with a limited number of suspects, and whose solution depends largely upon figuring out times and places, and picking up on small clues dropped in dialog. But the mystery also has to have an appealing sleuth. Delano Ames gives us all the elements of an excellent classic mystery, along with a bonus: two appealing sleuths.

Jane Hamish is a law clerk at the small London firm of Playfair & Son. Her fiancé, Dagobert Brown, is currently unemployed. A regular client, the extremely paranoid Mrs. Robjohn, has been found dead in her apartment. The death is ruled accidental, the result of the gas jet in the gas heater going on in the middle of the night when gas service is restored after an outage. Dagobert, who visited Mrs. Robjohn earlier that evening with Jane, realizes that the death was actually a murder. With his plentiful spare time, he begins an investigation.

Over drinks, tea and dinners, Jane and Dagobert compare notes about his sleuthing and what she has been able to find out in the office. They have quite a few suspects: Mrs. Robjohn's son, Douglas; his secret fiancée and Jane's office co-worker Sarah; Major Stewart, one of the law firm partners; Rosemary, another co-worker and someone who shares a secret with Major Stewart; Oates, the light-fingered office runner with apparent underworld connections; and old Mr. Playfair himself. Figuring out the culprit will take a lot of devious tricks by Dagobert, and some risky ploys by Jane.

Delano Ames's writing is delightfully wry, and Dagobert and Jane are a lively, smart-talking pair. They're not unlike Nick and Nora Charles in some ways. Dagobert delights in tricking suspects and driving them a little crazy with his antics, while Jane often tries to puncture Dagobert's bumptiousness with a well-placed dart or two. But, unlike Nora, Jane is an active partner in the sleuthing; a supremely intelligent young woman who is up to the challenge of solving the crime.

Note: A version of this review appears on Amazon, under my username there.

The Goldilocks Principle

You probably remember the fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I recently read in Wikipedia about the original 1837 tale by British poet Robert Southey:

"In Southey's tale, three anthropomorphic male bears – 'a Little, Small, Wee Bear, a Middle-sized Bear, and a Great, Huge Bear' – live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. Each bear has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed. One day they take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. An old woman (who is described at various points in the story as impudent, bad, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction) discovers the bears' dwelling. She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. Assured that no one is home, she walks in. The old woman eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Prowling about, she finds the bear's beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The climax of the tale is reached when the bears return. Wee Bear finds the old woman in his bed and cries, 'Somebody has been lying in my bed, – and here she is!' The old woman starts up, jumps from the window, and runs away never to be seen again."

The version of the fairy tale I'm familiar with, and I'd bet you are, too, features a little girl instead of an old woman who visits the house. The little girl, in addition to being very curious, is very fussy and she tests three bowls of porridge, three chairs and three beds before deciding in each case that the Wee Bear's is just right.

The Goldilocks Principle (the condition of being just right) applies to my reading, too. This can create some real problems, trying to find a book that feels like the perfect fit for my mood. A few weeks ago, Georgette suggested using fortune cookie fortunes to find that book and I enjoyed trying that method. Usually, however, I employ the same method Goldilocks used, trying some on for size until I find the right one. Given one situation, here is a book that was just right for me.

I had a draining day at work. After dinner, my two boys backtalked when I told them it was time for homework. I wanted to respond with a little impudence of my own but instead I picked up a book by George V. Higgins, Penance for Jerry Kennedy, and vicariously enjoyed all the adult sass.

Higgins was an assistant U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts and dealt with organized crime. He later worked as a criminal defense lawyer, defending clients such as Eldridge Cleaver and G. Gordon Liddy. As a writer, he is most famous for his books about Boston's lowlife, including The Friends of Eddie Coyle (which I'll tell you about on Saturday), The Digger's Game and Cogan's Trade.

He also wrote a series about a nice guy named Jerry Kennedy, whose criminal-defense practice after 20 years is repetitive. Kennedy says, "Half of what it repeats, from my clients' mouths and mine, can be reduced to those two short words: 'Big money, Mister Kennedy, he promised me big money.' The other half, or roughly that, is people who have created their own troubles with some kind of intoxicants, either because they did not get their big money or because they in fact did.... For me, in my middle age, child molesters and wife-beaters are a welcome change, people who did evil things because of warped passions that did not involve money. And, of course, I meet them all because I'm out for their money."

In the second book of the series, Penance for Jerry Kennedy, Kennedy's client, personal accountant and good friend Lou Schwartz, has been convicted for his income-tax preparation for mobster Nunzio Dinapola. Schwartz refused to cooperate with the prosecutor's scheme to nail Dinapola, so Schwartz was prosecuted instead. Kennedy admits he is not at his best when he puts on a show that he wouldn't believe were he the one watching it and therefore he couldn't convince the jury that Schwartz didn't lie when he signed Dinapola's 1040 form claiming that as the tax preparer, he believed the numbers and sources of income to be true and accurate. (As Schwartz tells Kennedy, "You think Nunzio is going to tell me to put down the barbut games? You think I would ask him where he got the money? You think I would like him to have me killed? Of course it is lies.") Schwartz is going to jail for two years and Kennedy is miserable about it. To add to his unhappiness, the IRS is now turning its attention to him because he's Schwartz's attorney; his wife Mack is arguing with him about money; his secretary is procrastinating; and his mentor, big-shot lawyer Frank McDonald, isn't eager to help him. Kennedy, in his search for a new accountant, falls into the hands of Bertram Magazu, which may not be a good thing.

Higgins's ear for dialogue, ability to create an entertaining courtroom setting and skill at characterization are remarkable. He can define characters in just a line—"David is the sort of guy that you jab every chance that you get, just because he deserves so many more shots than he'll ever get in this world that God would punish you for wasting one." His plots are sometimes filtered through a torrential digression of dialogue and the narrator's internal musings but then one doesn't read Higgins's books for plot alone. If you appreciate a quick-witted, insightful, somewhat world-weary but Mr. Nice Guy narrator, these Jerry Kennedy books are for you. They're not for readers who can't tolerate X-rated talk. For readers who can, they will make you laugh out loud. You don't have to be a legal mysteries fan to enjoy them. I particularly recommend them to people who like Michael Connelly's sleazy lawyer Mickey Haller. Start with the entertaining first book in the series, Kennedy for the Defense.

I'd love to hear about an experience that prompted your attempt to nail down that just-right book. What did you end up reading?