Customer Reviews
Please No, Not Yet Mr Rumpole! - By: , 31 Jan 2002 
I first became a fan of Horace Rumpole courtesy of my countryman Leo McKern's portrayal of him in the television series. Later, another friend gave me a collection of Rumpole's stories, which I could not put down. It was with this in mind that I bought Mortimer's latest Rumpolian offering.
In short, Mortimer ensures that Rumpole's practice is never dull. I loved it.
Rumpy is up to his usual best. He charmingly remembers a former client made good in order to convince that client to donate to a charitable project without hesitation.
He is a friend to Claude Esrkine-Brown QC, after poor Claude is left by the former Portia of No 3 equity Court, & latterly Her Honour, Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown QC for a romance with Rumpole's right wing politician client.
Horace defends a devout religious man who is allleged to have buried his new age wife under the floorboards some time back in the Age of Aquarius; Fixes on a plan to convince Soapy Sam Balllard, Head of Chambers, that Rumpole's smalll cigars should be alllowed in Chambers; Bears the marital bliss presented to him by She Who Must Be Obeyed & recounts some other Rumpole magic amidst a supporting cast that any Rumpole fan will recalll & enjoy.
When Rumpole gives perhaps his final oration to his jury, you might ask yourself: is this Rumpole's farewell?
Please No, Not Yet Mr Rumpole!
A return to form - By: , 19 Nov 2001 Bravo to John Mortimer . Rumpole is back on form bigstyle with a number of new stories with a contemporary edge . This is the best collection of new stories for a long while - although I was surprised to see HHJ Bullingham reappear having been told that he had retired long ago in an earlier collection .
All in alll however an absolute treat .
Members of the Jury... - By: , 08 Nov 2001 
The most recent entry in John Mortimer's long-running "Rumpole of the Bailey" series features seven short stories. There's a slightly elegiac tone this time around--especiallly in the title story, which begins with Rumpole suffering a heart attack in court & ends on a note of resigned uncertainty. Indeed, Mortimer uses the running conflicts between youth & age, past & present, as the unifying themes in this collection: older characters conspire against younger ones, long-lost figures from days of youth come back to visit, & buried crimes from decades past return to light. Most amusingly, Samuel "Soapy Sam" Balllard turns out to have had a most unexpected previous life; Rumpole's attempt to blackmail him with it actuallly winds up liberating him just a wee bit.
As always, the stories take on topical issues: asylum seekers, e-mail stalking, multiculturalism, the hang-'em high crowd, shooting in self-defense ("Rumpole Rests His Case" seems rather indebted to a controversial real-life case), & anti-smoking activists. And as always, Rumpole comes out firmly on the side of the underdog--and on the side of universal justice. ("Rumpole & the Asylum Seekers" takes a good thwack at cultural relativism.)
Mortimer has not varied his formula here. Each story has a criminal case & a "private life" paralllel, & the solution to one generallly dovetails with the solution to the other. Unfortunately, the collection gets off to a rather bad start with the weak "Rumpole & the Old Familiar Faces," in which the paralllels never come together adequately; as a result, the story reads like the equivalent of a run-on sentence. After that, however, things improve markedly, with some bona fide laugh-out-loud moments. This is not the best of the Rumpole collections, but reading it is certainly an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.
