James Morton reviews more summer books for lawyers



City of Spies

by Simon Levack

Simon & Schuster, £10.99

Paperback


Ever since Father Brown, amateur detectives in different forms of life have proliferated. Mediaeval monks, ladies who run typing schools in Africa, ancient Greeks and Romans, and a host of others have been joined by former solicitor Simon Levack’s Aztec slave, Yaotl.


Levack’s first novel, Demon of the Air, won the Crime Writers Association’s Debut Dagger Award, and this is the author’s third outing. It might also be Yaotl’s last, doubtful as that may be, if his master, Lord Feathered-in-Black, has anything to do with it – he wants to sacrifice his slave. To complicate things, Yaotl’s former lover has been arrested for murder. Slick with entertaining characters and some good turns, this is certainly one for those who like crime novels with a historical setting.



Boyo
by Jim Ross

Trafford Publishing, £12.99

Paperback



The career of Evan Williams, a Welsh solicitor who began legal life in the rough-and-tough Cardiff courts, now moves to the quieter country town of Tonbury. Happily married but unable to resist the attentions of clients, staff, court ushers, and partners – all equally beautiful and all of whom throw themselves at him – Williams survives the vicissitudes of 30 years of legal life, including a near-fatal attack by one of the husbands.

The book, one of the new breed of self-published books, is curiously disjointed – a good deal of time is taken up describing minor magistrates’ court cases. Indeed, for a man who apparently has a big criminal practice, his clients do not get up to anything much. Incidents, including the shooting, are isolated and unresolved; years pass in a page and minutes in several. What the book really needed was a good editor to bring out its best.

Nevertheless, Ross, who ‘has a background in the building society movement’, has put together a thoroughly readable account of a small town law firm, easily recognisable by practitioners. If you can live with the typos, it will certainly pass a couple of undemanding hours on the beach very pleasantly.


Me and my shadow
by Stephen Morris


AuthorHouse, £10
Paperback



Just space to mention the comic political novel of another (trainee) solicitor who has also gone down the self-publishing route. The main character, Sam, hijacks a downtrodden Conservative Party and convinces it to hold an ‘X Factor’-like show on live television called ‘Who Wants To Be A Pri-Mini-Star?’ When Sam rolls out his prospective cabinet – full of young, easy-on-the-eye students-cum-future ministers – the entire party falls in love with them, and a naive, celebrity-obsessed public vote them in by a landslide. But little do they know what Sam is really up to, his terrible secret identity, and the extent of his ‘apocalyptic’ plot.


Quirkily written with telling asides to the reader, this will not appeal to everyone. Humour is a very personal thing. Those who find PG Wodehouse hilarious cannot, for the life of them, see the wit in Carl Hiaasen, and vice versa. But you never know, Me and my shadow might just turn out to be another masterpiece like John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces.



James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist