Rumpole and the Reign of Terror

by John Mortimer

Overview

John Mortimer's bestselling barrister is back, in his most timely case yet

Just in case Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders gave fans the impression that the Great Defender was resting on his laurels, his new case sends him at full sail into our panicky new world. Rumpole is asked to defend a Pakistani doctor who has been imprisoned without charge or trial on suspicion of aiding Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, on the home front, She Who Must Be Obeyed is threatening to share her intimate view of her husband in a tell-all memoir. The result is Rumpole at his most ironic and indomitable, and John Mortimer at his most entertaining.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440679254
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/30/2007
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	440,953
File size:	183 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Mortimer is a playwright, novelist, and former practicing barrister who has written many film scripts as well as stage, radio, and television plays, the Rumpole plays, for which he received the British Academy Writer of the Year Award, and the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. He is the author of twelve collections of Rumpole stories and three acclaimed volumes of autobiography.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Mortimer delivers another first class mystery. (A)"
-Entertainment Weekly

"As ever, Mortimer proves himself master of the bon mot, cutting aside, and glorious run-on sentence. . . . Another delightfully entertaining and thought-provoking novel."
-The Boston Globe

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Eighty-three-year-old barrister turned author John Mortimer is back with another installment in his popular mystery series featuring the rotund London criminal lawyer Horace Rumpole. In Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, the grumpy barrister is faced with his most difficult -- and timely -- case to date: defending a Pakistani doctor accused of being a terrorist.

Always ready to defend a liberal cause, Rumpole gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to represent Mahmood Khan, who has been living in England for most of his life. When Khan, a respected doctor who obviously loves his adopted homeland -- he respects the royal family, regularly eats roast beef, and cares deeply about cricket -- is thrown in jail despite the absence of explicit charges, Rumpole rushes to his defense. But with the entire legal system, a fearful populace, and Rumpole's wife, Hilda (a.k.a. She Who Must Be Obeyed), all ready to toss the alleged al-Qaeda operative in prison for life and throw away the key, Rumpole finds himself utterly alone in his fight for justice. To complicate matters, the neglected Hilda becomes the object of infatuation of none other than Justice Leonard "Mad Bull" Bullingham, the judge presiding over Khan's trial…

Fans of the extensive Rumpole franchise -- the long-running BBC television series, the radio shows, the short story collections, etc. -- will be pleasantly surprised by Mortimer's second full-length Rumpole novel (after 2004's Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murder), which tackles touchy themes (racial and religious prejudice, excessive government anti-terrorism initiatives, etc.) with understated wit, panache, and class. Paul Goat Allen

Mortimer's curmudgeonly barrister, Horace Rumpole, defends a Pakistani doctor accused of aiding al-Qaeda in an up-to-date tale that pits Rumpole against those who use the terrorist threat as an excuse to subvert the British legal system. When Mahmood Khan, who loves the queen, roast beef and cricket as much as any respectable Englishman, is imprisoned on vague charges, Rumpole must use all his wiles including blackmailing the odious home secretary to ensure a fair trial. Meanwhile, wife Hilda (aka "She Who Must Be Obeyed"), as revealed in extracts from the memoirs she's secretly writing, has been flirting with Judge Leonard "Mad Bull" Bullingham, her husband's courtroom nemesis, who winds up presiding in the case against Dr. Khan. If luck as much as clever sleuthing figures into Rumpole's ultimate triumph, this daringly topical entry in Mortimer's cherished series shows that the 83-year-old author remains as skilled as ever at delivering an entertaining mystery. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Horace Rumpole forgoes his usual diet of lowlife clients (Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, 2004, etc.) to defend an accused terrorist, with predictably lightsome results. According to Peter Plaistow, who's been prosecuting threats against Her Majesty's government for as long as Rumpole's been swilling Chƒteau Thames Embankment, Dr. Mahmood Khan, a Pakistani immigrant who's lived half his life in the Kilburn house his father left him, is a terrorist. For security reasons, however, neither Rumpole nor his client is allowed to know exactly what offenses he's supposed to have committed. When Rumpole goes up against Plaistow in court, his ringing invocation of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights gets him nothing but a lecture about how "jury trials and the presumption of innocence may have been all very well in their day." Meanwhile, his wife Hilda, who confides to her diary that Dr. Khan "must be dangerous or the government wouldn't have arrested him in the first place," is concerned about Rumpole's possible designs on a sweet young thing but scarcely notices that the judge she's seeing is bent on easing her into divorce. The rollicking means by which Rumpole wangles a jury trial, in which he can learn what his client is accused of and then get him acquitted, shed no light on the graver conflicts between state security and individual freedom, but there's never any doubt which side Mortimer is on. Agent: Michael Sissons/PFD

Kirkus Reviews

"Mortimer delivers another first class mystery. (A)"
-Entertainment Weekly

"As ever, Mortimer proves himself master of the bon mot, cutting aside, and glorious run-on sentence. . . . Another delightfully entertaining and thought-provoking novel."
-The Boston Globe

From the Publisher