Rumpole Wins, Again and Again (Rumpole Rests His Case, Rumpole a la Carte)

     John Mortimer. Rumpole Rests His Case (2001) Seven tales illustrating Rumpole’s forensic skills and his firm conviction that banging up fellow citizens is bad, no matter how badly they have misbehaved. The tone of these stories is more elegiac than ever. Mortimer’s stories glance at contemporary politics, the shenanigans that respectable people get up to, the weaknesses and frailties of human beings. In “The Old Familiar Faces”, Rumpole does some good outside the courtroom by using a bit of discreet blackmail on villains who have hidden their naughty pasts under a cloak of respectability. “The Actor Laddie” muses on the sometimes surprising results of ego-sustaining vanities, when Rumpole’s aging-actor client pleads guilty to theft merely because he wants to make a grand speech to the Jury. The title story shows Rumpole in hospital and demonstrating a ward-mate’s innocence to the satisfaction of the Jury consisting of the other patients.
     The stories maintain the genial surface of the series, but there’s a darkness beneath it. Rumpole wants to prevent miscarriages of justice. His notions of good and evil are that we are all sinners. The best we can hope for is that the small pleasures of life will offset the darkness.
     Mortimer was a lawyer, his stories have the ring of truth, and remind us that the justice system is not about justice but about keeping crime in check. Especially crime committed by the lower classes. As always, a pleasure to read, but disturbing to contemplate. ***

     John Mortimer. Rumpole a la Carte (1990) In the title story, Rumpole sucessfully defends a restaurateur against a charge of maintaining a filthy insalubrious establishment. He wins all his other cases, too, including the informal ones within Chambers. But the victories are often bitter-sweet, what with the frailties of homo sapiens unlikely to disappear. In the last story, he prosecutes, and ends up defending the accused. The judge is not impressed, although a conviction would have been a grave miscarriage of justice. Recommended. ***