The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers
Edited by Michael Hemmingson
(Reviewer - Narayan Radhakrishnan)
2001 Constable & Robinson Limited, UK
ISBN: 0786708654

The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers is an anthology of short stories on law & lawyers, judges & juries, gripping courtroom stories full of legal twists & turns.

Advocate & Sr. Reviewer - Narayan Radhakrishnan writes:

The last decade & a half has shown a marked increase in the sale of legal thrillers, with the stupendous success achieved by authors like John Grisham The Firm & Scott Turow Presumed Innocent in this genre. So, any book jacket carrying names of Grisham, Turow & that of old masters Erle Stanley Gardner & Louis Auchincloss is sure to grab the attention of any legal thriller lover.

Michael Hemmingson has collected in this volume 39 courtroom/legal stories not only by the accomplished masters but also legal stories of up-&-coming writers. Featured are writings of Gardner, Turow, Grisham, Andrew Vachss, Francis M. Nevins. Jr., the accomplished masters of the genre & also exciting legal stories from non-legal authors like Jeremy Russell & John Lutz.

The Mammoth Book, true to its name is mammoth in content, but a trifle disappointing as acknowledged superstars of the genre like Steve Martini, Richard North Patterson & Lisa Scottoline, have been left out.

Then again only a chapter each from Grisham's The Partner & Turow's Pleading Guilty are included & not any of their stories. So friends be warned, before you jump into buying the book just on seeing the Grisham or Turow name, thinking to read their short stories.

Nevertheless, I must say that the other stories show a remarkable variety; from the interesting Perry Mason The Case of the Crying Swallow to the amusing Mike Wiecek's The New Lawyer, & from the intriguing Francis M. Nevins's Loren Mensing mystery Night of the Silken Snow to the satirical My Bonnie Lies by Ted Hertel Jr.

A classic among the 39 stories in this compilation is not by a lawyer author, but by non-legal author Jeremy Russell. His Prayer Denied, an interesting & thought-provoking lawsuit against Satan, is one that ranks equal to Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster & is one of the better stories in the collection.

Legal thriller novels have always been popular, but legal thriller short story anthologies are few in number. Only Jay Wishingrad's (Ed.) Legal Fictions: Short stories about the Lawyers and the Law & William Bernhardt's (Ed.) Legal Briefs have achieved bestseller status; & as the jacket of this book proclaims, The Mammoth Book is a collection which is long overdue.

Though not a great collection, it is a good anthology worth its name -- a potpourri.
(12/02/01)

Narayan
2001©Narayan Radhakrishnan
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
I am a 26 years old lawyer practicing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Along with my legal practice, I have finished post-graduate studies for both Business Law & Human Rights. I am a self proclaimed numero-uno legal thriller lover & am the proud owner of all of Grisham's & Turow's novels. I enjoy John Mortimer's Rumpole & relish an occasional Martini & a rare Scot(ch)t-oline with a Patterson on the side.

My work A FICTION OF LAW is now about 500 pages in length & features 500 lawyer authors & 2000 legal thrillers covering a 300 year period - inclusive of entries from the USA, UK, Asia, Europe, China, Middle East etc. Still in search of a publisher.
www.keralatourism.org