Exchange with Dean Jobb Concerning A Gentleman and a Thief

My last post was a review of A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb. After reading the book I wrote to the author. A copy of my letter and his reply are below. A warning before reading. There may be more information in my letter than some readers would want before reading the book.

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Dean:

I was very glad my good friend and sister in the law, Dawna Ring, sent me a copy of A Gentleman and a Thief. I appreciate your inscripion to me. I enjoyed reading the book. I will be posting my review, a copy follows  this letter on my blog, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan, in a few days.

As I read the book I thought there was a moment when Arthur Barry might have used his bright, agile, organized mind for a conventional life. When he returned from World War I you set out his unsuccessful efforts to find a job amidst hundreds of thousands of demobilized soldiers. Could he not have found a job again with his brother or through another of his siblings? Or was he lying about sincerely seeking employment?

While reading a true crime book I think about an alleged and/or actual criminal and their legal representation. My experience in criminal defence goes back 49 years to when I graduated from law school.

I have observed that it is a rare accused who, charged with serious offences, does well on his own (it remains to this day rare for the accused to be a she).

While it pains me to say it, Arthur did better on his own than he could have with a lawyer advocating for him. Charm and apparent candour worked well. 

I appreciate that he confessed to save his wife, Anna Blake, but he is so clever in dealing with the prosecutor and police. He provides abundant information on other thefts, on the condition he is not charged with them. He discreetly sets his accomplice, James Monahan, as the leader of the duo. Being allowed to plead guilty to one theft limited his punishment. His sentence of 25 years is severe but not the maximum.

The police and district attorney had good reason to be content with the single guilty plea. Victims, even if they talked to Arthur in darkened bedrooms, were uncertain of him being the thief. Beyond having stolen items in his possession there was little evidence against him. I am sure the district attorney hesitated about pursuing additional charges for it would have been interesting to see what a jury would have done had Arthur gone to trial and said he did not know what was in the box containing damning evidence given to him by Monahan when he was arrested. There would also have been questions over the admissibility of his confession because of the inducements made to him while being questioned.

I am sure there were many New York City lawyers ready, even eager, to defend the Gentleman Thief. Do you know if he consulted a lawyer before or after his confession?

Years later, when he was facing trial for “planning and inciting the deadly riot” in which he escaped from Auburn prison he had the wisdom to have a lawyer represent them rather than try to represent himself, though his co-accused, George Small, did well on his own.

You set out that Arthur received court appointed counsel in Max Goldman. He was well represented by Goldman. The book simply describes him as a local lawyer. Do you know anything of Goldman’s experience as a lawyer?

I was struck that Arthur did not take the witness stand. Accustomed to talking his way out of trouble I would have guessed he would have wanted to testify. Do you know why he did not go onto the stand?

I think he was wise not to expose himself to cross-examination. He would have had to admit his extensive criminal history. He would have had to admit he was not a mere bystander. He would have had to admit that he participated in the violence.

I wondered if he subsequently had legal assistance in his parole application. It was well done and dealt with legal issues more than factual matters.

I think Arthur could have been a great lawyer instead of a great criminal.

If you are able to reply and are willing I would post your response together with this letter upon my blog.

I look forward to reading more of your books.

All the best.

Bill Selnes

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Thanks for your kind words, Bill, and for the great write-up. Much appreciated.

Everything I could find about Barry's dealings with the justice system is in the book.

Dean

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A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb

A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb

(40. - 1223.) A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb - Arthur Barry was an altar server in a stable working class family in Worchester, Massachusetts in the early 1900’s. At 13 he was big for his age - 5’ 8”. He attributes his size to
his downfall. He looked and acted older than his age. He enjoyed “amusing himself” by vandalism. A veteran safecracker, Lowell Jack, turned nitroglycerine maker hired the young Arthur to deliver nitro. A life of crime was well underway. He was subsequently prosecuted as being a “stubborn child”.

After serving honourably in the American army as a medic during WW I, Arthur makes his home in New York City where he swiftly becomes in the words of Hercule Poirot a “.... thief of distinction”. 

He steals from the rich. Arthur rationalizes:

“People rich enough to own jewels,” he reasoned, “never had to worry about their next meal.” And they would no doubt have an insurance policy to cover their losses.

Arthur carefully plans his thefts. Still I was amazed at his steely nerves. Most of his robberies take place while the victims are in the house.

Among the most striking of his thefts is the robbery at the Long Island estate of Joshua and Nellie Cosden while they are hosting Lord Louis and Lady Edwina Mountbatten. After everyone has retired he climbs a rose trellis and slips into the house. He steals the jewelry Nellie had on that night that she had left on a dressing table. He enters the Mountbatten bedroom and takes jewelry Edwina had left in a tray. Mountbatten awakes and turns on a light. Arthur, in a movie scene, hides behind a curtain until Mountbatten turns off the light and goes back to sleep. He steals jewels worth $172,000 that night. He fences them for about $17,000.

Arthur is about to face a determined foe. Nassau County on Long Island organizes a County Police Department and the determined Harold King is appointed Chief of Detectives. He is known as the “scholarly cop”.

Arthur often wears a suit on his thefts. He is careful to always wear gloves so that he leaves no fingerprints. 

Chased from a home by two servants and recognizing the growing risk from police and homeowners, Arthur decides in the mid-1920’s to engage an accomplice. He choses a former Worchester resident, James Monahan. 

It was inevitable that he would be arrested. The circumstances of his arrest and questioning were remarkable.

There is abundant drama in his downfall.

I have written Jobb about Arthur’s interactions with the legal system and lawyers. The letter and reply, if he responds and consents to his answers being posted, will form another post.

Jobb is a brilliant narrator. He has the gift of storytelling. He keeps the story moving while inserting vivid word illustrations of events. I prefer non-fiction to proceed chronologically. Jobb follows that approach setting out Arthur’s life story as it happened. I was drawn along, wanting impatiently to find out what happened next in his life. That feeling happens regularly when I read fiction but it is rare that a writer of non-fiction can pull me that deeply into the story. A Gentleman and a Thief is a great book.

Ocean Drive by Sam Wiebe

(41. - 1224.) Ocean Drive by Sam Wiebe - Cameron “Cam” Shaw is released from the Kent Penitentiary on parole having served 7 years of a 10 year sentence for manslaughter. He beat a drunk man to death with a hammer. The man had hit him with a stainless steel trimguard.

He returns to White Rock near Vancouver. He finds employers are not hiring ex-cons with work experience in construction but no certificates.

At 29, with no prospects, he rejects an offer from Zoe Prentice of Prentice & Associates, wanting information on the League of Nations which is composed of white and South Asian gangsters. They are a “feeder group, street level associates, of the Heaven’s Exiles Motorcycle Club”. The League handles cross-border narcotics trafficking and is engaged in other illegal activities. Ratting on the League will be dangerous work. The League’s motto is “Thrive or Die”.

Staff Sergeant Meghan Quick of the White Rock RCMP detachment is at a house fire on Marine Drive. It is efficiently put out. The fire appears to be a routine situation until the body of a young woman is found in the house.

Quick, divorced from Rhonda, grew up in White Rock and knew the Reed family who owned the house. She is saddened when it is determined that Alexa Reed is the deceased. Her neck was broken before the fire was started.

Reading comments on social media from Alexa that no one cares and no one pays attention to what is happening in White Rock, Quick vows:

“I am now,” ….. “Sorry it took so long.”

Cam, after a confrontation at a warehouse with members of the League, re-considers his refusal of Prentice's offer.

Cam, using his manslaughter qualifications, edges into the League. A gang leader,Tito, likes the reserved Cam who wastes no words.

Quick wants to see him when she realizes that Cam killed Roger Garrick whose wife, Liz, is Alexa’s cousin and that he was released from prison just before the fire.

Following a fundamental principle of investigating, Quick gets surprising information by following up on the finances of Alexa’s parents, Emily and Richie.

How far will Cam go as a gang associate? He is not a violent man at heart.

The Vipers gang with its pair of suburban brothers is clearly inspired by a real life gang and brothers who created havoc in Vancouver.

As with almost all of us there are trials and tribulations that drag down Quick. She has her own means of coping:

Whiskey and pills she thought. This heady connection was believed by superstitious middle-aged divorced lesbian police  officers to contain miraculous curative properties. Often paired with cigarettes and reasonably fresh coffee …

Life is harder for Cam. He is ill-suited for the gang lifestyle. With little money, little employment and no family beyond a semi-estranged uncle his prospects are bleak.

There is more violence and more violence.

The plot is a little disjointed with the mysterious Prentice not having a presence for over 200 pages of the book. I thought the book would have worked better without this mysterious subplot.

Wiebe has become a literary craftsman improving his writing from book to book. Ocean Drive moves swiftly and smoothly. The characters are believable. He draws the reader into the somewhat shabby White Rock and its enclaves of wealth. Drugs infest White Rock. 

Cam and Meghan are excellent characters. I hope they appear again. 

****

Wiebe, Sam - (2015) - Last of the Independents and The Unhanged Arthur Award; (2016) - Invisible Dead and Sam Wiebe on His Sleuths; (2018) - Cut You Down and Sam Wiebe on Dave Wakeland; (2021) - Hell and Gone andA Vulnerable Tough Guy; (2023) - Sunset and Jericho

Black Diamond by Martin Walker

(38. - 1221.) Black Diamond by Martin Walker (2010) - It is late November and truffle season has begun. Police Chief Bruno Courrèges has noticed the small black fly that signals truffles about the “alley of white oaks” he had planted 10 years ago when he bought his property. He has a few brumales, second grade truffles, for sale. He has hopes in December of finding one or more of “the real black diamond, the melanosporum” which “could go for more than a thousand euros a kilo”. The sales “would never come to the attention of the tax man”.

In neighbouring St. Alvère there is a weekly market in truffles that now includes an  online market. Bruno’s friend, Hercule Vendrot, advises him that he fears inferior Chinese truffles are being passed off as French truffles. If true, the truffle market would be devastated just when its business is growing with new plantations of white oaks.

At the same time there is tension in St. Denis. A court has ordered, for enviornmental reasons, the closure of the local sawmill which is the main employer in town. While a new mill is being built not far away the ècolos are resented.

The issue is also very personal. Guillaume, who wants to be called Bill, Pons is the estranged son of the owner of the mill, Boniface Pons. Guillaume is leading the local ècolos and financed the lawsuit against the mill.

There is a physical confrontation between father and son that is swiftly escalating when Bruno, the mayor and fire chief get between the combatants and a brawl is prevented.

Bruno keeps in touch with the pulse of the community through personal contact. At the weekly market he visits each stall holder. He aids the mayor in collecting money for a party for the children of the unemployed or on minimum wage. It is the best of community policing.

Dressed as Father Christmas, to aid in collecting for the party, he is embroiled in an attack upon the stall of a Viet couple. A pair of young Chinese men vandalize the stall. Bruno is knocked out by a stun grenade. A young Chinese man who is one of the attackers is captured. He is in France on a student visa.

Chinese restaurants in the region are firebombed.

The baron and Bruno find Hercule near their hunting hide (shack). He has been tortured and hung by his wrists. As a barbouze (literally translated as a person with a false beard), he had been a part of French security forces dealing with issues involving Indochina and Algeria and the OAS. When Bruno calls a brigadier he knows in French Intelligence he is instructed to take his gun and guard Hercule’s home and deny entrance to everyone until security officers arrive. Why would an old intelligence officer, retired for almost 40 years, be tortured and killed?

Bruno’s former lover, Isabelle, is sent from Paris to look into Hercule’s records. Current lover, Pamela, is enjoying life at St. Denis, and is running for town council as a member of the Greens / Socialists coalition.

Fellow hunters and friends of Hercule gather to eat and honour his life. Bruno prepares a feast for the wake. There is a soup of turnips, leeks and potatoes made in stock from wild boar bones. Bruno shaves a black diamond truffle he found that day into the soup.

Bruno makes a rich venison casserole.  

In the fireplace over a bed of red ashes, at the baron’s chartreuse, a dozen pigeons for the dozen men are roasted.

There is pâté which Hercule had helped to make with his friends.

Salad with Sergeant Jules special vinaigrette and pommes sarladaises complete the meal.

Bruno creates a truffle creme brûlée for dessert using one of his own truffles.

Guests bring fine wine and champagne. Some bottles cost over 100 euros each.

There has never been a male gathering I have experienced in Canada with such a menu. I do not know a group of Canadian men who are no chefs who could prepare such a meal.

Once again a current case draws Bruno into the complexities of French history. Wars continue long after there are public resolutions of the conflicts. As always, the food is amazing.

****

Walker, Martin - (2019) - Bruno, Chief of Police and The Magic of St. Denis and Three Pines; (2023) - The Dark Vineyard

Damascus Station by David McCloskey

(37. - 1220.) Damascus Station by David McCloskey - Sam Joseph has been a CIA agent for 10 years. He is exceptionally skilled at recruitment. He has an easy charm that lets him make strangers feel instantly at ease. He is fluent in Arabic.

Early in the Syrian Civil War, around 2011, America has few assets in the Syrian governing elite. Driven by the consequences of a failed mission in Damscus he seeks out a mission to recruit Mariam Haddad, a political counselor at the Palace. Her father is a general. Her Christian family is at the heart of the Syrian establishment. She is a “real daughter of the regime”. However, her cousin, Razan, was brutalized by a member of the mukhabarat, one of the many Syrian security forces.

Miram is to be a Syrian developmental.

An operation is set up for Paris where she is recruiting, through intimidation, a dissident and supporter of the rebellion, Fatimah Wael, to return to Syria. Mariam provides a paper listing 22 relatives starting with Fatimah’s mother that the regime will arrest if Wael does not comply with its demands. Fatimah says no - “I intend to stay free”.

In Syria the mukhabarat use terror, often arresting and torturing and killing, to preserve government authority. They have no concern whether the arrested are guilty of anything.

The book reminded me that there was and is a significant Christian minority in Syria which is allied with the Assad regime. They know they will be harshly treated if the fundamentalist Muslim jihadis gain power.

Sam contrives to meet the beautiful Mariam at a reception and sets up a date where he gently establishes a relationship.

Mariam knows Sam is not a diplomat.

They meet again on the Riviera and everything blows up.

Mariam becomes a highly prized asset.

Knowing she will be tortured and executed if discovered versus his modest risks, Mariam tells Sam she expects more from their relationship than professional support and comradeship.

In Syria information comes from Russian intelligence that the Americans have a new asset in Syria.

Mariam is excited about being an agent while constantly fearing discovery.

How Mariam and Sam exchange information in Syria was fascinating and detailed.

I was surprised once again how many people receive confidential information about sources in the West. While possibly helpful in assessing credibility the risk of exposure to the source is immense.

The U.S. had a self-proclaimed red line that it would react if Assad uses poison gas. Assad has a large quantity of sarin.

Inside Syria there is justifiable paranoia for everyone. The war / rebellion is vicious. At the same time all are weary. Among the leadership, secrets are shared. Secrets on all sides are compromised by humans. Plots abound.

The real life storming of the American Embassy by a “mob” is replayed in fiction.

McCloskey has written an excellent thriller. He drives the narrative accelerating to the end. Damascus Station was recommended to me by Marian at the Sleuth of Baker Street bookstore. The violence is significant and the body count substantial but no more than the average current thriller. It is an impressive debut by the former CIA analyst. His story was vetted by the CIA to ensure he did not compromise systems or individuals. I look forward to reading his next book, Moscow X.

The Wealth of Shadows by Graham Moore

(36. - 1219) The Wealth of Shadows by Graham Moore - World War II is about to begin. Ansel Luxford is a quiet tax attorney in Minneapolis. He has a loving wife, Angela, and a 2 year old daughter. He is a clever man. He understands statistics, especially economic data. Ansel and Angela have a passion uncommon in the America of 1939. Amidst the indifferent and the isolationists of the U.S.A. they are passionately anti-Nazi. 

Ansel is recruited to join a secret team that will fight the Nazis. It is an unlikely band of brothers and a sister to go to war. They are lawyers, accountants, economists and professors. Not a bullet will be fired nor a bomb dropped by them but in the words of their leader, Harry Dexter White:

“We’re going to crash the German economy.”

 I was hooked. As a lawyer who has spent his life fighting through words I loved the premise of paper warriors taking on the Nazis.

The team will need vast amounts of statistical information to go to economic war. The greatest source will be German. The Reich Statistical Office is leading the world in compiling economic statistics about Germany. Under Hjalmer Schacht, the Dark Wizard of Global Finance, an army of German statisticians is analyzing the gathered data. 

Through personal contacts White has been able to get hundreds of boxes of German data.

They are blandly called the Research Department.

Germany has been rapidly expanding its military for 5 years and is now at war. The official records neither show large increases in the money supply nor huge amounts of borrowing by the government. 

Ansel is called upon, as the economic storyteller of the Department (I think lawyers are good storytellers), to explain to FDR’s trusted economic adviser and friend, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. how the Nazis are financing their war.

Ansel sets out how Schacht created Mefo bonds which are issued by a company owned by the government. Banks are required to purchase the bonds which pay 4% interest which they then pay to the accounts of their depositors but the depositors cannot take out the money and repayment of principal keeps being extended by the government. The Mefo bonds are a shadow currency.

The flaws in the scheme are consumer spending and imports. German citizens at some point will want to use the money in their accounts to buy goods. To pay for imports the Nazis are looting and stealing from Jews, Czechs and now Poles. The Nazis have to keep expanding their empire to pay for the war.

Having identified the weaknesses in the Nazi economy, how will the Department exploit the weaknesses?

As the Department plots Angela gets a job as a secretary at the FBI. Ansel and Angela solemnly vow not to reveal to the other any secret information they get at work. The vow lasts barely a day.

Angela hears the Soviets have a spy inside the Department. They agree to keep the shared knowledge of the spy secret from both the FBI and the Department.

White then tasks the Department with developing a strategy which will allow FDR to transfer American weapons to Britain and France without breaching The Neutrality Act. To give or sell the weapons would breach the Act unless the same offers were made to Germany.

The greatest opposition to The Department comes from fascists within the State Department. A bureaucratic war ensues.

Ansel and White meet with Lord John Maynard Keynes, the most famous economist of the first half of the 20th Century.

There is a substantial discussion on the history and use of money which was getting tedious. The essence of the analysis was that money is based on trust that it will have the value tomorrow that it has today.

 Fortunately, the book livened up again as the Nazis sweep across Western Europe in 1940. The Deparment plots to damage the Nazis and allow financing of vast amounts of weapons to be manufactured in the U.S. 

Ansel and Angela are charmed by Keynes and his Russian wife, Lydia. 

The personality clashes between White and Keynes, the conflicts over monetary policies, the manipulation of statutes to allow governments to spend billions of 1940’s money are tense and fascinating. I was reminded of how Stanford law professor, Paul Goldstein, wrote three compelling works of mystery fiction involving patent law.

As long as a work of fiction involves betrayals and large amounts of money it has a good chance of success.

What was most surprising was the effort at The Deparment, before the U.S. was even a part of of WW II, to work on creating a global economic policy for the era after the war has ended.

Many historians talk about the importance of U.S. military might ensuring the Axis powers would be defeated. Few discuss how America crushed German and Japanese access to money and goods.

The book climaxes with the meeting at Bretton Woods in 1944 to work out the post-war financial structure. Will the planned World Bank and the International Monetary Fund be supplied with dollars (the plan of Harry and Ansel) or Bancor (an international currency governed in London by bureaucrats like its proposer, Keynes).

As at any great moment in history the decisions are made by a few men (now but not then it is just as likely to include women). Harry and Keynes face off at 2:00 in the morning with Ansel trying to moderate. The arguments are ferocious. Harry believes American generosity during the war to Britain gives the U.S. the edge. The Britons counter with a strategic move of their own involving Amerca. You will need to read the book to find out what happened. 

The future of money in the world is to be decided by a pair of intractable subtle adversaries. There are further meetings and carefully worded documents. 

The book demonstrates how important words are in determining the fate of the world.

****

Moore, Graham - (2011) - The Sherlockian and Email Exchange with Graham Moore, Author of The Sherlockian on Self-Garroting; (2017) - Last Days of Night and Paul Cravath; Hardcover

The Long-Shot Trial by William Deverell

(35. - 1218.) The Long-Shot Trial by William Deverell - Arthur Beauchamp’s efforts at savouring quiet days in his Gulf Island home with a cup of tea, the Goldberg Variations playing softly in the background and a good book in his hands, perhaps a literary thriller, are shattered when his wife Margaret, also known as his life companion, hands him the second edition of Wentworth Chance’s biography of the esteemed barrister.

Arthur is aghast that Chance’s calumnies of the first edition, clumsily addressed in the second edition, have actually been exacerbated by the inclusion of a chapter on the murder trial of R. v. Angelina Santos. The assertion in the book that during that time Arthur dallied with a pair of “women for hire” has aggravated Margaret. He decides to set the record straight or at least put his actions in context by writing his own memoir of the famous trial which took place 56 years earlier in 1966.

He heads to his spartan cabin near his home, places paper in his aged typewriter and writes of his stalwart defence of Miss (it is well before Ms.) Santos in Fort Thompson (Fort Tom), near the Yukon border in northeastern British Columbia. She is a 20 year old Filipina immigrant.

A domestic servant, she is charged with murder for shooting her employer, Frederick C. Trudd, with his rifle. She alleges he had raped her three days earlier. The local townspeople have raised $15,000 for the defence, a major fee in the 1960’s. The community despised Trudd.

Arthur’s section head, Alex Pappas, considers her doomed. Fueled by several double Scotches (he did not quit drinking until 1987) Arthur vows:

“If she goes down it won’t be because I didn’t fight for her”.

At the same time Pappas, with Arthur’s aid, is preparing for the murder trial of Vancouver’s richest man, Herb MacIntosh. 

Arthur, raised in one of Vancouver’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, by a pair of university professors, recognizes he is ill-equipped to understand life in the distant forests of northern British Columbia.

Arthur is dismayed by his client’s honesty:

But I would find it awkward relating to a client who, apparently, was incapable of telling lies. Most of my defendants hadn’t suffered that handicap.

She is a Catholic woman of great faith. She refers to her unborn child as a “beautiful miracle”.

She remembers little of the crucial moments before shooting Trudd. A prison doctor believes she has repressed these memories.

She is a woman without guile which disconcerts the young Arthur.

Unfortunately, the socially awkward inhibited Arthur does not conduct a detailed discussion with Angelina concerning the rape and its aftermath.

The case draws one of the province’s newest judges, Wilbur Kroop, a combative Federal prosecutor before ascending to the bench. Arthur and Justice Kroop have an intense mutual disdain.

Prosecuting will be an aggressive, though lazy, loudmouth from Vancouver, Ed Santorini. He will be assisted by a young lawyer, Clara Moncrief.

Heading north for the trial, Arthur’s flight is cancelled and he unwisely takes the bus. It is a 30 hour ride beset by breakdowns and belligerent adults and crying children.

Arthur spends the days before the trial in Fort Tom working to build a defence. 

He is beguiled by the comely Miss Moncrief. Will he venture into a relationship with a Crown?

His client believes God will stop the government from taking away her baby if she is convicted of murder.

Occasionally the plot drifts back to 2022 where Arthur’s memories of 1966 are aided by the mouse nibbled transcript of the trial his law firm unearthed from its archives.

Ridden with anxiety - few lawyers are any different before a trial - Arthur appears mentally unready for a capital murder trial but, when Order is called, he rises and becomes the experienced barrister of 5 years at the bar.

While Angelina had told Arthur only “God will decide her guilt or innocence” she does plead not guilty.

Shortly after the trial begins the Crown plays the recording of Angelina’s call to the RCMP:

“Please come. I think I shot Mr. Trudd and he’s dead.”

The reason for the title of the book is made clear through those two sentences.

The Crown case proceeds with Arthur engaged in skilful cross-examinations. It is a challenge to question those either experienced with testifying, police officers, or having expertise, doctors, but there are opportunities when they are arrogant or careless.

No one writes trial evidence better than Deverell. 

I found Arthur’s doubts and hesitations about calling a witness who might identify an alternative killer misguided. No defence lawyer can worry about the consequences to a legitimate alternative. His/her duty is to advocate for their client. If your client’s interests are secondary you must withdraw as counsel.

It took me awhile, though I was ahead of Arthur, to figure out there would be a mighty twist because of the pregnancy.

Arthur’s quick wit and willingness to tread over legal boundaries makes the trial entertaining. There are consequences.

In the end, Arthur faces the greatest challenge of defence lawyers. Should Angelina testify?

I was shaking my head at Arthur’s hubris at the end of the trial. If found guilty of murder the sentence was bound to be that Angelina was to hang though Arthur certainly knew that the Federal Cabinet had commuted all death sentences as a matter of policy since 1963. With hanging no longer the punishment Angelina would have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

His address to the jury is mesmerizing though it would have faced valid objections over raising facts not in evidence.

The Long-Shot Trial is another excellent Deverell mystery. The trial is riveting. The stretching of trial proprieties was present but not over done. Deverell is a master craftsman of legal mysteries. Arthur Beauchamp is a barrister nonpariel.  

****

Deverell, William - (2011) - A Trial of Passion; (2011) - Snow Job; (2012) - I'll See You in My Dreams; (2012) - "D" is for William Deverell; (2014) - Kill All the Lawyers and The Lawyers of Kill All the Lawyers; (2015) - Sing a Worried Song and Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - Sing a Worried Song; (2018) - Whipped and A Fictional Porcupine Plain; (2021) - Stung and A Fictional Defence of Necessity