This is the first book of sixteen (sixteen!) in a series of story collections about and narrated by an average lawyer who takes (mostly defense) cases for the indigent and needy (not because he’s so gracious, but because of the payment guarantees of legal aid). He mostly does all right by his clients, but sometimes doesn’t. The setup is that this is narrated as if a memoir by an aging, but not exactly elderly lead attorney who works in the local courts and is well-known around town. He narrates a series of cases, sometimes acting as mysteries and procedurals, and sometimes more like comedies of manners, involving different cases. There’s a lot of discussions of the nature and role of law in the UK (oddly progressive? At least by American standards), and the views of the defense. There’s at least one uncomfortable rape case that shows that the same kinds of wormy rhetoric surrounding rape today was already plenty present 40 years ago.
I feel like this book series is very famous, and perhaps loved within the UK in a way that Americans most don’t know about. It was more or less new to me, and I found it by seeing one of John Mortimer’s other books on a list, and my Overdrive had this one, so I checked it out.
It’s kind of like a lawyer’s version of Jeeves and Wooster, but without the kind of inborn idiocy of Wooster. Rumpole is a pretty good lawyer, as these things go, in terms of being able to use his gifts of speech and persuasion to win cases. He’s also pretty clever too. But he’s not good at following the rules, he’s kind of a bastard, and he’s a bit fraught in terms of whether or not his clients always benefit from the risks he takes.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Rumpole-Bailey-Mortimer-John-Paperback/dp/B00OX8VMOI/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1573569420&sr=8-5)