Rumpole of the Bailey

Review ''Rumpole is one of the immortals of mystery fiction.'' --San Francisco Chronicle on the Rumpole stories ''Mortimer has created one of the legendary fictional detectives . . . a barrister [who's] as much a detective as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.'' --Boston Sunday Globe ''I thank heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole.'' --Observer (London)''Rumpole is worthy to join the great gallery of English oddballs ranging from Pickwick to Sherlock Holmes, Jeeves, and Bertie Wooster.'' --Sunday Times (London) ''First-rate comic writing . . . In the fluidity and panache of his prose, his combination of high intelligence and low foolery, John Mortimery is worthy of camparison to P. G. Wodehouse.'' --New York Times Book Review Product Description [Read by Frederick Davidson] These six short stories introduce all the lovable (or not so lovable) characters from the delightful Rumpole series. Horace Rumpole, the irreverent, iconoclastic, claret-swilling, poetry-spouting barrister-at-law, is among the most beloved characters of English crime literature. He is not a particularly gifted attorney, nor is he particularly fond of the law by courts if it comes to that, but he'd rather be swinging at a case than bowing to his wife, Hilda -- ''She Who Must Be Obeyed.'' In this first title of the popular series featuring Rumpole, all of the major characters who occupy the Rumpole stories make their introductions: the sneaky, slightly effeminate Erskine-Brown; the bumbling Guthrie Featherstone; and various and sundry other lawyers and clerks whose lives weave in and out of these stories. These six stories include the Younger Generation, the Alternative Society, the Honourable Member, the Married Lady, the Learned Friends, and the Heavy Brigade. About the Author JOHN MORTIMER (1923-2009) was a playwright, novelist, and barrister. He wrote many radio, film, and television scripts, including the British television series 'Rumpole of the Bailey', and won the British Academy Writer of the Year Award in 1979. He retired from the bar in 1984 and was knighted in 1998.