Court in a cliché


The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

James Sheehan

Transworld £6.99

Rudy - handsome with an engaging smile and great physique, but slow - is tempted by Lucy, the siren of Bass Creek, Florida to her trailer for late-night recreation, if not rest. When she is found dead shortly afterwards, he is a sitting duck for a conviction - particularly as Bass Creek has its usual share of ambitious politicos and crooked cops. Nor does it help when he is defended by the local drunken lawyer.



Ten years into Rudy's stay on death row, with an execution coming up in the next few weeks, Jack Tobin, a burned-out city lawyer, discovers that his old recently deceased mate Mick is Rudy's father. He also finds a long-lost love and, best of all, his passion for the law is rekindled as he battles to save the now saint-like Rudy from Ol' Sparky.



If you think you have read something like this scenario before, that's because you have - most recently by Richard North Patterson. The figures produced by lawyer-author James Sheehan are pretty standard and his court scenes do not grip as do those in say the novels of Patterson, Steve Martini or John Grisham.Even so, if you arrive at Heathrow and find you have nothing to read, this will pass a pleasant enough few hours of waiting for your flight to be called.





Soldier, sailor, swindler, MP



Napoleon is Dead: Lord Cochrane and the Great Stock Exchange Scandal

Richard Dale

Sutton, £20
In February 1814 a partially successful swindle was operated on the London Stock Exchange, based on a rumour that Napoleon had been killed by the Cossacks. Lord Cochrane, MP for Westminster and regarded as second only to Nelson as the naval commander of his age, was prosecuted as a conspirator. He was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and an hour in the pillory. The latter was commuted because it was feared the crowds might rise in his support. He escaped from prison, was recaptured and later regained his seat in Parliament.



For the next 30 years, he campaigned for a pardon. With the help of papers from Cochrane's solicitors, Farrer & Co, with whom the commander quarrelled bitterly, Richard Dale has put together a dextrous and readable account of the scam, the trial and Cochrane's career. But was the pardon really merited?





Mishaps may not amuse



Toby Potts in the Temple of Gloom

David Osborne

Exposure Publishing £9.99
This novel, written by a barrister, covers a very long year, set in a period which seems to run from 1990 to 2005, in the life of fledgling barrister Toby Potts. He encounters all the usual traumas - crooked clients, recalcitrant clerks, irascible judges, and pompous silks - but the year ends in triumph for our hero.



Most practitioners older than 40 and certainly those older than 50 will recognise many of the situations, and indeed may be able to put names to one or two of Potts' friends and foes. There are some good broad comic, now politically incorrect, situations, but the book needed serious editing - particularly of the chapter in which a Chinese witness is treated as a character in a 30-year-old Benny Hill sketch. The cover of this self-published novel is furnished with an unattributed quote praising the book's humour. That humour is patchy at best.





Grave Doubts

Elizabeth Corley

Allison & Busby £14.99
Police officer Louise Nightingale is used as a decoy in an important case, which results in her being attacked. After she has given the evidence that helps to bring down a stalker-rapist who operates via an online contest known as The Game, she finds herself becoming the target of harassment and realises she is also being stalked.



The frightening situation does not abate even after Louise retreats to a remote West Country house, given to her by her brother.

Driven nearer and nearer to a breakdown, she wonders whether this can have anything to do with The Game. That would certainly be the way to bet.



Louise Nightingale is an engaging heroine and the widowed Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Fenwick makes a credible hero. However, someone should run the rule over the trial scenes in Ms Corley's future novels. Do English barristers now say 'objection' and the judge 'sustained'?





Murder Files

Richard Whittington-Egan

Magpie Books £9.99
The veteran crime writer Richard Whittington-Egan has put together more than a hundred of his articles, mostly on murder cases from the 19th and 20th centuries.



From time to time he throws in glimpses of his family, who were at the Grand National with the Maybricks shortly before James Maybrick died of arsenic poisoning - a case of murder for which Maybricks widow subsequently stood trial.



Other treats include a file on the conman who ghosted Lord Darling's memoirs and went to prison for forging a letter from George V's private secretary.



Lawyers should pay particular attention to the Swinfen case, in which a former parlour maid sued the Lord Chancellor and one of

the barristers began an affair with his client.



An ideal bedside book.