"Exciting mystery anthology"

Barrister Horace Rumpole suffered a near-fatal heart attack (see RUMPOLE RESTS HIS CASE) and convalescences in the Primrose Path Home while his colleagues mount a death watch and a competition to replace him. Bored, cranky, at war with much of the staff, and feeling like a prisoner with a life sentence, Rumpole learns that another patient fellow patient died under strange circumstances. Refusing to rest at the rest home, Rumpole escapes confinement and is back on the case trying to learn what happened to his rest home mate.

That is the first of five cleverly designed stories and one other well written but flawed tale that brilliantly return Rumpole back in London solving cases, obeying his wife Hilda, and entertaining his myriad of fans while he achieves all that. John Mortimer scores big time with this superb collection that ends with a toast the barrister's fans will join Hilda in hoping that Horace has more escapades next year.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 22, 2003

Summary

With Rumpole Rests His Case, legions of fans welcomed back the curmudgeonly London barrister they had savored for years. In Rumpole and the Primrose Path's six new stories, Horace Rumpole, despite a heart attack that left him at death's door in the previous volume, deftly parries everything from the admonitions of his wife, Hilda, to the vagaries of his legal colleagues and their new director of marketing, Luci-with her cell phone, corporate jargon, and glossy brochures, hired to give their chambers a new image. The title story finds him in a very dubious convalescent home battling a thin-lipped head nurse and befriending a junior one, Dotty. Though the death of an elderly patient is shrouded in secrecy, it is not until Rumpole is back in chambers that he learns of police suspicions-and of the murder charge against which he must defend young Dotty. Presuming Rumpole is soon to expire, Luci has been planning his memorial service, but the witty and irreverent Rumpole, sharp as ever, is far from hanging up his wig!