Is Rumpole calling it a day?

Rumpole Rests His Caseby John MortimerViking, 16.99Neil RoseSix years after Horace Rumpole last raised a glass of Pommeroy's Chateau Thames Embankment to his lips, puffed on a small cheroot and muttered 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' to his wife's retreating back, the Bar's most elderly junior is back.Rumpole has seemed on his last legs many times over the years, but the distinct impression given by his 11th literary outing is that this might really be it.

The first story in the book - shorter and less substantial than the norm - sets a strong theme of time past, regret and nostalgia that the other five fully formed stories, plus one shortie, do little to dispel.

This is despite the usual trick of putting Rumpole at the centre of highly topical stories, such as asylum seekers, politicians smoking cannabis, and a burglar shot by a home-owner.Rumpole has given so much pleasure over the years that it is difficult to be too hard on this volume, but the fact is that these episodes are not quite up to the usual standard.

Rumpole is tired.

The intent is there, but the plots and sub-plots are, in the main, simply not as strong as they have been in the past.

Even if nothing short of death would force the great man to hang up his wig - and even then one imagines that St Peter would experience the full force of his advocacy - it sadly feels like time for Sir John Mortimer to do it for him.Of course, there is still much to enjoy, not least the appearance of the gloriously drawn regular sidekicks, such as the Erskine-Browns - as usual suffering marital discord - the dithering Guthrie Featherstone, Soapy Sam Ballard (to whom Rumpole gives an unexpected new lease of life) and the rest.

Even His Honour Judge Bullingham - who, as 'the Bull', has featured many times as Rumpole's judicial nemesis - resurfaces after a long absence in the final tale, a low-key affair which ends with unsurprising ambiguity about whether Rumpole will return.

And despite the flaws and the feeling that that should be that, one still has a contradictory yearning to see him one more time in print.An old quote from Clive James has been on the cover of Rumpole books for many years now and remains hard to disagree with.

'I thank heaven for small mercies,' he wrote.

'The first of these is Rumpole.' Whatever the problems with this volume, it is undeniably great to see the old boy back.