Literary lawyers

by DAVID HORSPOOL

I have never seen the point of reading an author because it's his anniversary, so I was rather surprised to discover today that it is 100 years since Bram Stoker's death, and it so happens that I am reading Dracula. Not rereading, I'm afraid (it has taken this long to get over a very deep-seated childhood fear of anything vampirish, which developed without a break into a deep-seated adult ennui at most vampire films and tv programmes).

I won't presume to pronounce on the book's virtues (though I will say that it's keeping me awake at night, so something's working), but the character of Jonathan Harker did prompt a thought about something else: sympathetically portrayed lawyers in literature. I suspect Harker isn't going to turn out all good (don't spoil it for me), but he's likeable enough at the beginning, fearlessly plunging deeper into Transylvania while everyone around him makes it achingly clear that it's a very bad idea. I like, too, that he seems genuinely preoccupied with seeking out local recipes (all big on paprika) to bring back to Mina. I realize he isn't the keenest of minds (cautious and risk-averse characters don't make for very good horror set-ups:"Don't go into the attic!" "No, I won't, it sounds absolutely terrifying."). But I can't help liking him.

Most literary lawyers are rather less heroic, less personable, more dried up, more like Mr Tulkinghorn. There are decent ones, but they tend to be advocates, barristers like Horace Rumpole or defence attorneys like Atticus Finch. Harker is a solicitor, a rather less glamorous type (his mission to Castle Dracula is to get some property documents signed; it's good that he has used his "Kodak" to take a picture of the place to show the Count). Solicitors are the sort of lawyers who account for the popularity of those coffee mugs that say, quoting Shakespeare,  "Let's kill all the lawyers" -- mostly of course, owned by lawyers. I'm sure there are more examples of rounded, non-criminal lawyers in English letters, discounting those created by the likes of John Grisham or Scott Turow. But where should I look?

Comments

[Gigi Santow]

I recommend William Gaddis's A Frolic of His Own. Of an imaginative variety of lawsuits my favourite deals with the interesting question of whom to sue when one runs over one's own foot.

[Elizabeth Foxwell]

Please look at James Gould Cozzens's _The Just and the Unjust_, which is on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mystery works. On the flip side is Melville Davisson Post's Randolph Mason.

[David Horspool]

Thank you Elizabeth and Gigi. It will be a pleasure to turn from vampires to more everyday bloodsuckers.

[Eric Hanson]

There are the Mr. Tutt stories by Arthur Train. Also, The House of the Arrow by A. E. W. Mason. Henry Cecil's legal stories are O.K. but not as good as Rumpole. Wodehouse swore by Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels but I find them a bit overplotted.

[susanne]

There is a solicitor hero in Josephine Tey's 'The Franchise Affair'. Sympathetic solicitors occur in many Thirties detective stories, such as Giles Carrington in Georgette Heyer's 'Death in the Stocks'.

[Christopher Taylor]

I do believe that most Lawyers are like Mr. Tulkinghorn. There are indeed decent Lawyers because they made a remarkable win over their cases. But there's no denying the fact that there are also lawyers who haven't used the best of their knowledge in defending their clients.