Alan G. Stromberg, President & CEO, Verbex Voice Systems, Inc., Edison, New Jersey
His book qualifies to be the backbone of any company sales training program and sales management guide.

ANNOTATION

This sparkling collection of Rumpole stories features six new tales of the "barrister (who's) as much a detective as Sherlock Holmes" (Boston Sunday Globe). Sure to delight Rumpole's legions of literary fans, these new stories will also be eagerly devoured by all those who enjoy the PBS-TV series "Rumpole of the Bailey, " based on John Mortimer's books.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In John Mortimer's latest collection of Rumpole stories the comic, courageous, and corpulent "great defender of muddled and sinful humanity" is joined by a winning cast of villains and victims in tales whose wry humor and sparkling wit deftly send up the British legal system. In Rumpole and the Angel of Death our hero achieves new, resounding triumphs over the forces of prejudice and mean-mindedness. "Rumpole and the Way through the Woods" involves Rumpole in the world of hunters and the hunted, animal rights and human wrongs. In "Rumpole and the Rights of Man," he finds at the European Court of Human Rights that international justice is as fallible as the domestic variety. And for the first time, Hila, She Who Must Be Obeyed, tells a story all her own. This richly entertaining volume will delight fans who have been waiting, Rumpoleless, for more than two years, and will convert new adherents to the faith.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

After a two-year break, the indomitable barrister Horace Rumpole returns in six sprightly new capers, including one told by his long-suffering wife Hilda, who proves to be every bit as canny as her crafty curmudgeon of a husband. As always, Mortimer writes with a Wodehousian lan but, unlike Wodehouse, he incorporates a spirited if indirect wrestling with the social and political issues of the day. In the title piece, an old judge with Alzheimer's is a posthumous figure in a case involving a doctor who is charged with unduly hastening the judge's end. In "Rumpole and the Way Through the Woods," animal-rights activists clash with fox hunters, and the wife of Horace's old friend dies mysteriously. When the widower finds new romance with indecent haste, the wily Rumpole has to consider more than just heated politics. Dealing elsewhere with sexism and child kidnapping, Rumpole is by turns acutely sensitive and brazenly bullheaded, as Mortimer dances nimbly around thorny subjects with his trademark ease, applying all-knowing wit and painstaking characterization. (Mar.)

AudioFile - Susan R. Rosenzweig