It's a lawyers' jungle out there

Does this town have water?By Shaun PinchbeckSessions of York, 9 (including postage & packing)Gareth Brahams

After reading the front and back covers of solicitor Shaun Pinchbeck's book, two questions spring to mind.

First, why is the book self-published?

Second, if he went travelling with his girlfriend, Jo, why did he end up marrying Anna from Finland? Unfortunately, only the second question remains unanswered.

That is not to say Mr Pinchbeck's tale of his 12,000-mile overland journey through the Americas in 1989/90 will not provide plenty of entertainment for a lawyer picking up this book.

It is just that perhaps only lawyers can cope with his use of the English language, which at times reads more like a lease than a travel book.

By day, Mr Pinchbeck is a criminal and employment lawyer, and a partner at Yorkshire firm Heptonstalls.

For instance, he is so anxious to avoid ending sentences in prepositions that he describes an Indian tribe as a people 'with whom it was generally considered that it was not a very good idea to mess'.

And surely only a lawyer would write 'it is harder for city folk to be friendly, time is generally of the essence'?

The book does not appear well researched, so for the most part, unlike more sophisticated travel books, the reader is tied to the tale of the journey without there being much context.

This also means that for the latter part of the book in particular, the time constraints of the trip leaves readers with only the narrowest of glimpses into the countries they pass through.

Mr Pinchbeck was in and out of Colombia within 30 hours, not the soundest basis on which to form an opinion about this fascinating country.

He managed to be possibly the only person to have travelled through Peru without visiting its old Inca capital, Cuzco.

Even when he does devote more time to a place, such as Santiago, he manages to overlook Bellavista, the old colonial area where Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's house can be found.

There are plenty of saving graces in this book, including an account of an alarming series of incidents that followed Shaun and Jo taking up the offer of accommodation from an Argentinian gaucho who neglected to mention his knife-wielding brother, as well as eerie descriptions of life in Managua, Nicaragua's capital.

So, if you can hack through the 'lawyerspeak' jungle, you will discover a few gems, but don't expect to find out why Shaun married Anna from Finland and not the long-suffering Jo.

Gareth Brahams is a senior solicitor at London law firm Lewis Silkin

l To order a copy, write to Mr Pinchbeck at Heptonstalls, DX 22255 Pontefract.