The holiday season is a time for celebrating traditions and one of my favorite traditions is the Christmas mystery.
Some of you may be asking “What is so merry about murder?” and, while I agree that it is a perfectly reasonable question, I can’t begin to offer a reasonable answer, except to say that since at least the time of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, something about the many excesses of Christmas — food, wine, parties, and presents — seems to push some people to commit holly-jolly homicide, without caring a figgy pudding as to whether it will put them on Santa’s naughty list.
For those who are not already familiar with the eponymous character of A Rumpole Christmas, Horace Rumpole can best be described as the epitome of the word “curmudgeon.” Rumpole is an elderly London barrister of the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court who is fond of such traditions as cigars, steak and kidney pie, and a glass or three of Chateau Thames Embankment.
A Rumpole Christmas collects five stories previously published from 1997-2007 in various British magazines and newspapers.
In “Rumpole and Father Christmas,” Rumpole’s fellow barristers plan a children’s party to be hosted at their chambers, while in “Rumpole’s Slimmed-Down Christmas,” Rumpole’s wife (known as “She Who Must Be Obeyed”) signs Rumpole up for a holiday at a health farm, which is distinctly unjolly until murder occurs and things begin to look up.
“Rumpole and the Boy” has Rumpole left babysitting a young boy who is preoccupied with sensational murders, while in “Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces,” Rumpole unexpectedly meets up with a couple of his former clients. The latter story is made additionally amusing as Rumpole attempts to explain the traditional British pantomime, cross-dressing and all, to a clueless American.
The final story of the collection, “Rumpole and the Christmas Break” takes on a more serious note as, while defending a young Islamic university student on a charge of murder, Rumpole must confront both the incomprehensibility of violence committed for religious reasons and the prejudice of so-called Christians who see everyone of Islamic faith as potential terrorists.
It is during this last story in particular that Rumpole, whose spare time is mostly preoccupied with indulging in his well-loved comforts while attempting to avoid invoking the wrath of She Who Must Be Obeyed, demonstrates the noble side of his rather ignoble reputation for being willing to defend anyone. While one might immediately assume that this qualifies Rumpole as the stereotypical sleazy lawyer, Rumpole reminds his fellow lawyers (and the readers) that everyone is assumed to be innocent until a jury returns a judgement of guilty, an opinion which makes the curmudgeonly Rumpole seem downright radical compared to those who are so quick to accept whatever sensational story is spun by the media. John Mortimer, who died in January, 2009, was himself a barrister, and he manages to make the stodgy British legal system seem both comic and relevant. This makes A Rumpole Christmas both smart and entertaining, a book of traditional British mysteries with a sting.
(Penguin, 2010)
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