Famous Trials

Rating:
Summary: Stuffy Little Book
Review: The thrill of these cases must lie in the telling, because I can see now that some of them are unutterable dull when told so flatly. The case of Alma Rattenbury, the most poignant of all classic murder cases, and one which was treated with great depth and honesty in Terrence Rattigan's late play CAUSE CELEBRE, is here just another boring story of adultery and murder, not even worthy of a Lifetime Channel for Women miniseries. F. Tennyson Jesse is better at telling the story of Madeline Smith, and the man who drowned all his brides and inspired the Chaplin film MONSIEUR VERDOUX gets an elegant summing up by Eric Watson, a writer new to me.

Crime is a funny thing and I suppose they asked John Mortimer to edit (or "select") this volume because of his reputation for writing the famous Rumpole books and his expertise at the law. He is one of the world's most overrated writers so he doesn't really add anything to the book, just gets his name printed in huge letters much bigger than those of the real editors. One of the ironies of today's push for big marketing is that the people who really do the work are often ignored.