Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

When two war heroes are found murdered in their nearby homes, the son of one of them becomes the prime suspect. Everything looks bleak for the young man, until fate decrees that his junior counsel should be a young, untried lawyer, Horace Rumpole. Rumpole's leader, C.H. Wystan, QC, plans to involve himself as little as possible, and lose with dignity. But, if there is one thing that Rumpole is not about to do, it is to lose with dignity. The main question is, if the accused didn't commit the murder, then who did? That is the question that Rumpole must answer if he is going to save the seemingly doomed young man.

My wife and I have been fans of Rumpole of the Bailey for years, both the television shows and the books, and we both greatly enjoyed this book. It is every bit as entertaining and thrilling as the earlier Rumpole stories, and is impossible to put down! Even besides the court case, my wife and I loved the peak into Rumpole's past - his meeting with Hilda (later "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed"), and his first defense of a member of the Timson clan.

Heck, even if you have never heard of Rumpole, if you like a good mystery, then this book is for you. It is very well written, and will keep you on the edge of your seat. My wife and I both love this book, and highly recommend it to you!


You Get Justice In The Next World. In This World You Get   January 31, 2005
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Horace Rumpole!!!! And it is a good thing for any defendant facing a criminal charge in London to have the rumpled, oft-scorned, and much condescended to Horace Rumpole take up your defense against all comers.

John Mortimer's latest Rumpole story, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders takes us back to the great barrister's first big case. The story is told looking back after a conversation in chambers convinces Rumpole to write his memoirs. The story jumps back and forth between Rumpole's recollections of events interrupted only by the occasional (but highly amusing) bit of conversation with Hilda, she who must be obeyed, and his colleagues in chambers.

It is the early 1950s and Rumpole is young, eager, and ready to begin his career as a barrister He has found himself working for C.J. Wystan, the head of his chambers and the father of an assertive young daughter named Hilda. Simon Jerrold has been arrested and accused of the murder of his father and one of his father's friends. Each of the deceased flew for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and this was of no small consequence for the national press. All the evidence available points to Simon as the murderer. A conviction seems a certainty to all, including Simon's lead defense attorney, Wystan. Wystan has selected Rumpole to act as a silent assistant after Hilda suggests for some unknown reason that Rumpole is a man with a future in the law. It should surprise no one that Rumpole does not bow down to the conventional wisdom concerning his client's guilt. The story takes us through the remarkable series of events through which Rumpole assumes control of the defense and takes the case through trial.

As always, Mortimer writes with wit and verve. Mortimer first describes the appearance of Wystan as one that made him think of a "lobster who had been snatched from a peaceful existence at the bottom of the sea and plunged into boiling water." Followed immediately by a slight retraction, "but I have no wish to be overly critical of my future father-in-law."

By taking us back to his first case as a callow, slender youth Mortimer has invigorated and fleshed out (no pun intended) Rumpole considerably. We first came to know Rumpole as an aging overweight, hen-pecked curmudgeon who adheres to obsolete concepts of justice and the presumption of innocence when all around him expediency and decorum prevails. Mortimer shows us flashes of this in Penge Bungalow. We see the character traits: the wit, sarcasm and sense of fair play in its formative stages. We also find out how the young Ms. Hilda Wystan became the infamous she who must be obeyed. It is clear that once Hilda set her mind on something she is not easily denied.

The beauty of the Penge Bungalow Murders is our glimpse of Rumpole as a young man. His character is immediately recognizable. His body may have changed but his inner-self has remained constant. As one of Rumpole's favorite authors once said in Merchant of Venice, "I never knew so young a body with so old a head."

Rumpole and Penge Bungalow Murders is an excellent book. I have no hesitation in recommending it.


Finally, the case that began it all....   October 18, 2004
 28 out of 29 found this review helpful

It was with no little trepidation that I bought this book. As a practically lifelong fan of John Mortimer's greatest comic creation, Rumpole of the Bailey, it was no easy thing to open the book that proposed to tell the full story behind what had hitherto been "a name to conjure with", Rumpole's first and ever-after cited greatest triumph, The Penge Bungalow Murders, which Rumpole of course won "alone and without a leader!"

In one sense there was absolutely no way in which this book could fail to be a disappointment. To actually attach facts to this marvellous myth could almost be sacrilege, and there's no doubt that when revisiting passages from the previous stories in which Rumpole mentioned the Penge Bungalow murders, they will no doubt no longer have the same impact.

In a way, Mortimer has saddled himself with a particularly difficult problem. In accordance with reality (after all, nobody's perfect) Rumpole has never, unlike fictional detectives, been guaranteed to win his cases. In this case, however, there can be no surprise to the outcome, since Rumpole has never ceased talking about it in almost 30 years of books and TV series. Mortimer, however, does know what he is doing. Firstly he knows instinctively how to engage sympathy for the alleged perpetrator, and by combining this with the doubts exhibited by the "white wig" Rumpole (seasoned barristers never clean their wigs, so the greyer and more tattered the wig, the more experienced the lawyer) Mortimer successfully manages to introduce the necessary note of doubt and uncertainty for the maintenance of suspense. And secondly, experienced readers of Rumpole know that Mortimer is not averse to rounding off a Rumpolian triumph with a little sting in the tale, so one does stay on tenterhooks while reading.

One notable absence from this addition to the canon is the humour which normally characterises the stories of Rumpole (who has been described as one of the greatest comic creations in English Literature). Again, however, there are reasons that Rumpole fans should not be surprised. If there was one subject guaranteed to cause Horace Rumpole to drop his customary flippancy and cynicism, it was the death penalty; and as this story is set in the 1950s, when capital punishment was still the mandatory sentence for murder, the horror of the potential outcome feeds Rumpole's every thought. Mortimer is clearly also expressing long-suppressed feelings about senior defence barristers he encountered in the 1950s, who were rather more concerned with "maintaining the fine traditions of the bar" rather than doing anything substantial to help their clients, even in the event of capital cases. The anger he has felt all these decades is palpable and is certainly one of the reasons that this first ever novel-length Rumpole adventure is worth reading. Other elements of the Rumpole universe given a little more background include the origin of his long-standing relationship with the thieving Timsons of South London, and the precise circumstances of his marriage to the legendary She Who Must Be Obeyed, Hilda Wystan.

For the die-hard fans, I have to report a major omission. In Rumpole and the Expert Witness (included in Rumpole for the Defence, Penguin 1982) Rumpole defends Ned Dacre who is the son of Dr Harry Dacre, whom, in the story, Rumpole remembers as having given evidence in the Penge Bungalow case and having seen "my client's bruises." To save the curiosity of those who may have wondered if consistency would be maintained in the new novel, I'm afraid to have to report that neither Harry Dacre nor Rumpole's client's bruises feature in the case.