Collection: Rumpole and the Angel of Death

Overview

John Mortimer revisits Horace Rumpole with a collection that finds the veteran barrister confronting grimmer cases and the slow creep of age while still deploying his mordant wit and fierce loyalty to the underdog. The title evokes a darker mood, but the book preserves the familiar architecture of vivid courtroom set pieces, genteel domestic sparring, and Rumpole's habitual pleasure in turning a seemingly lost cause into a moral, if not always a legal, victory. Episodes move between the hopeless and the absurd, and Mortimer tightens the emotional stakes without abandoning the comic timing that made Rumpole a beloved figure.

Rumpole appears wearier and more reflective, aware of mortality and institutional change, yet stubbornly devoted to the principles that sustained him: skepticism of authority, an appetite for cross-examination, and a candlelit devotion to those society would discard. Cases range from petty cunning to serious accusations, and the narrative voice alternates between jaunty anecdote and a sharper interrogation of justice. The result is a set of stories that read like a late-career portrait, funny, elegiac, and morally engaged.

Mortimer's prose balances brisk dialogue with evocative scene-setting, moving readers through the London courts and back rooms where reputation and class quietly dictate outcomes. The collection offers both the pleasures of courtroom drama and the steadier satisfaction of character work, revealing how a lifetime in the law reshapes instinct, priorities, and humor.

Themes and Tone

A central theme is the tension between legal formality and human need: Rumpole is repeatedly drawn to clients who are vulnerable, eccentric, or judged worthy of scorn, and his defenses insist that the law should respond to human complexity rather than act as a blunt instrument. Mortimer uses the stories to critique the conservatism of the legal establishment and the petty cruelties of class-bound London society, while also probing how an elder practitioner navigates diminished energy and new professional fashions. The ethical center remains Rumpole's faith in advocacy as a humane profession.

Mortality and memory recur as quieter refrains. Where earlier tales reveled mainly in satirical set pieces, these later narratives admit heartbreak and doubt: trials bring consequences that feel heavier, and victories sometimes arrive hollowed by cost. Despite the deeper current of melancholy, humor persists as a survival mechanism; Rumpole's jokes, sly insults, and comic stubbornness act as defenses against both bureaucracy and despair, allowing Mortimer to blend pathos with a very English kind of comic resilience.

Tone shifts across stories, from buoyant farce to near-tragic reflection, yet a consistent authorial compassion holds everything together. The legal action is always carefully staged, Mortimer loves the architecture of a good trial, but he uses it chiefly to reveal character. Readers encounter the legal system's absurdities and injustices while being invited to appreciate the small, principled gestures that constitute genuine justice.

Characters and Legacy

Horace Rumpole remains the incandescent center, equal parts curmudgeon and champion, whose affection for poetry, cheap claret, and stubborn independence humanizes every case. His domestic battles with Hilda, archly dubbed "She Who Must Be Obeyed, " continue to puncture pretension and remind readers that personal life can be as combative as the courtroom. Supporting figures, juniors, judges, opposing counsel and the occasional eccentric client, populate the stories in ways that highlight professional rivalries and the social hierarchies embedded in law.

The book deepens the Rumpole mythos by allowing vulnerability to surface without negating the character's core strengths. Mortimer's sympathetic lampooning of the profession grows more tempered and, at times, mournful, offering a valedictory tone that enriches rather than diminishes earlier comic triumphs. Readers who came for clever cross-examinations will find them, but they will also encounter a seasoned moral imagination at work.

As a late entry in a long-running series, the collection reminds why Rumpole endures: it marries courtroom craft with humane observation, comedy with ethical seriousness. Mortimer's sympathetic portrait of a flawed, principled advocate makes these stories not just entertaining adjudications but invitations to consider what justice should look like when measured against mercy, memory, and the limits of a single life.