Books
Forever Rumpole: the Best of the Rumpole Stories

by John Mortimer
Viking, November 2011, $30.00

Collections of good short stories just keep on coming. One of them is the huge (just over 500 pages) Forever Rumpole: The Best of the Rumpole Stories by John Mortimer. This volume contains 14 of what editor Ann Mallalieu calls “The Best of the Rumpole Series.” That tells you all you need to know right there, but I’ll go ahead and add that seven of the stories originally appeared in a 1993 collection titled The Best of Rumpole. Those stories were chosen by Mortimer himself, and to them Mallieu has added seven more to represent the best of Mortimer’s later work. There’s one other selection, too. When Mortimer died in 2009, he’d begun work on a Rumpole novel, and four pages from that work are included here. Add in Mortimer’s introduction to the 1993 collection and Mallalieu’s fine introduction to this one, and you have a book that any reader of short fiction would be glad to add to the bookshelves.

Bill Crider

Collections of good short stories just keep on coming. One of them is the huge (just over 500 pages) Forever Rumpole: The Best of the Rumpole Stories by John Mortimer. This volume contains 14 of what editor Ann Mallalieu calls “The Best of the Rumpole Series.” That tells you all you need to know right there, but I’ll go ahead and add that seven of the stories originally appeared in a 1993 collection titled The Best of Rumpole. Those stories were chosen by Mortimer himself, and to them Mallieu has added seven more to represent the best of Mortimer’s later work. There’s one other selection, too. When Mortimer died in 2009, he’d begun work on a Rumpole novel, and four pages from that work are included here. Add in Mortimer’s introduction to the 1993 collection and Mallalieu’s fine introduction to this one, and you have a book that any reader of short fiction would be glad to add to the bookshelves.

Teri Duerr
2464

by John Mortimer
Viking, November 2011, $30.00

Mortimer
November 2011
forever-rumpole-the-best-of-the-rumpole-stories
30.00
Viking

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