John Mortimer Mystery & Detective Fiction Analysis
John Mortimer, who claimed to have been inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, wrote dozens of humorous detective stories and a few novels featuring Horace Rumpole, who specializes in crime cases—such as shoplifting and petty burglaries—that his colleagues shun. Though his wife frets about his failure to rise to Queen’s Counsel, he is satisfied with his lot, perhaps because he usually prevails over his nominal superiors, including judges and Queen’s Counsels. Readers quickly become familiar with his rejuvenating visits to Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, where he drinks cheap claret; his penchant for small cigars whose ashes cloak his weskit; his love for simple food like steak-and-kidney pie; his habit of quoting from William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth; and his dislike of ceremony.
The stories and novels have multiple plots, professional and personal, the latter either a domestic crisis between the old barrister and his wife or a problem with the courts or a colleague. The personal elements not only entertain and provide filler for an occasionally simple crime plot but also are complementary, offering a different take on the same theme. In addition, they further characterize Rumpole, an unlikely hero who selfishly rescues the reputations and careers of hapless colleagues and whose insight and slyness enable him to shape people and events to his own ends. It is in the courtroom, however, where he really comes alive and is most happy. His advocacy, often on behalf of unworthy clients, does not rely as much on legal knowledge as on detection skills and an ability to judge character, and he is an exemplary cross-examiner. A moral center, sophisticated comic voice, and timeliness are hallmarks of the stories.
Mortimer’s vast practical legal experience is obvious throughout, and Rumpole is his creator’s spokesperson on such issues as political correctness, animal rights activism, euthanasia, penal reform, and British politics. Though Mortimer used a standard template (for easy adaptation to television), he also provided variety. For instance, in Rumpole à la Carte, a 1990 collection, the crusty barrister is put in unfamiliar milieus. In the title story, Hilda’s expatriate cousin takes them to a three-star restaurant where Rumpole must deal with what he calls the curse of nouvelle cuisine. In “Rumpole at Sea,” Hilda books them on a cruise over his objections, Mr.“Miscarriage of Justice” Graves turns out to be a fellow passenger, and these erstwhile adversaries are caught up in a shipboard mystery that the judge bungles but Rumpole solves. In “Rumpole for the Prosecution,” as the title reveals, he becomes, for the first time in his career, a prosecuting attorney, and despite his unfamiliarity and unhappiness with the role, he follows his conscience and secures an acquittal of murder for his client. In Rumpole and the Angel of Death (1995), Mortimer again departs from his template, which always has had Rumpole as narrator. “Hilda’s Story” is in the form of a letter that She Who Must Be Obeyed writes to an old school friend, and “Rumpole and the Rights of Man” takes him to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where he confronts the reality of an international tribunal taking precedence over decisions of British courts. Of special interest in this 1995 collection is “Rumpole and the Little Boy Lost,” one of many stories in the Rumpole canon about the Golden Thread that is central to English law: the presumption of innocence until a fair trial determines otherwise.
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
The first full-length Rumpole novel, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (2004), is about a case (to which Rumpole alludes in previous tales) in...
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the early 1950’s in which two World War II heroes were killed, apparently by a son of one of them. Rumpole, an Old Bailey novice and newcomer to the law chambers where he would spend his career, takes on the defense though the incriminating evidence seems overwhelming and others despair of saving their client. He unexpectedly triumphs, becomes an instant star, and marries the boss’s daughter.
Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
Mortimer’s tendency to keep pace with the times informs the Rumpole novel Rumpole and the Reign of Terror (2006), in which a Pakistani physician in London is suspected of aiding terrorists linked to Al Qaeda, arrested without being specifically charged, and held for trial before a special tribunal that flouts hallowed legal traditions. Balancing this case against a more typical one involving a Timson, Rumpole successfully manages to finesse both, strikes a blow in behalf of the Magna Carta, and regains the respect and devotion of Hilda, who ends a brief dalliance with a judge and reveals to her husband that she too has been writing memoirs.
Under the Hammer
Less enduring than the Rumpole tales is Under the Hammer, a 1993 television series of just six episodes that Mortimer expanded for a collection of short stories published as a Penguin paperback the following year. The episodes revolve about employees of the London branch of Klinsky’s auction house, an international conglomerate presided over by a former supermarket magnate. Ben Glazier and Maggie Perowne, art experts at Klinsky’s, join forces to check the authenticity of items that come to the firm, becoming involved in escapades that take them not only to aristocrats’ homes but also to the criminal underground of London and Moscow. They also must deal with the questionable ethics of coworkers and art-world colleagues. Ben in particular develops a cynicism and iconoclasm similar to that of Rumpole, but lacks a social conscience that would foster action against the system. The stories also have a dollop of romantic adventure and comic relief, as in the Rumpole stories, but the adventures of Ben and Maggie have a pervasive frivolity and focus almost exclusively on people’s acquisitiveness and the mega-rich. Absent the social issues that pervade the Rumpole stories, the Klinsky adventures are little more than entertaining capers.