John Mortimer, British playwright, former practicing barrister, and author -- most recently of the novel
Rumpole and the Reign of Terror -- picked the five best books about law and literature for
Opinion Journal.
One of his selections:
A Certain Justice by P.D. James
P.D. James has created a super-efficient, highly professional Queen's Counsel named Venetia Aldridge. Unfortunately, when she rises to cross-examine a prosecution witness at the Old Bailey, she has only four weeks, four hours and 50 minutes left to live before she is discovered brutally murdered in her locked room in chambers. Has she been killed by the criminal riffraff she defends? The plot is developed with all the author's ingenuity, and great questions of justice are dramatized. But the book might act as a warning to all defense barristers.
Read about
his other selections.
--Marshal Zeringue
John Mortimer, British playwright, former practicing barrister, and author -- most recently of the novel Rumpole and the Reign of Terror -- picked the five best books about law and literature for Opinion Journal.