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Overview
From the creator of the Rumpole stories—a novel of middle-class do-gooding gone awry
Fans of John Mortimer and his popular Rumpole mysteries will love Quite Honestly, a comedy filled with a delightful cast of characters and Mortimer’s unique and entertaining take on a life of crime. Life couldn’t be better for Lucinda Purefoy—college educated, with a steady boyfriend and a job offer in advertising. With all this good fortune, isn’t it appropriate for her to give something back to society? Armed with only good intentions, she joins Social Carers, Reformers and Praeceptors (SCRAP, for short), a misguided organization that recruits women to becomes guides, philosophers, and friends to ex-convicts coming out of prison. Once she meets her charge, Terry Keegan, the ensuing hilarity and mishaps produce a signature Mortimer tale, full of wit and surprise.
Synopsis
From the creator of the Rumpole stories—a novel of middle-class do-gooding gone awry
Fans of John Mortimer and his popular Rumpole mysteries will love Quite Honestly, a comedy filled with a delightful cast of characters and Mortimer's unique and entertaining take on a life of crime. Life couldn't be better for Lucinda Purefoy—college educated, with a steady boyfriend and a job offer in advertising. With all this good fortune, isn't it appropriate for her to give something back to society? Armed with only good intentions, she joins Social Carers, Reformers and Praeceptors (SCRAP, for short), a misguided organization that recruits women to becomes guides, philosophers, and friends to ex-convicts coming out of prison. Once she meets her charge, Terry Keegan, the ensuing hilarity and mishaps produce a signature Mortimer tale, full of wit and surprise.
Publishers Weekly
The indomitable Mortimer (Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, etc.) is back with a new cast of quixotic characters. Lucinda Purefoy (Lucy), daughter of a liberal Anglican bishop and his gin-soaked wife, graduates from university with a hankering to repay her debt to society, so she joins SCRAP (Social Carers, Reformers and Praeceptors), a volunteer organization that pairs a do-gooder with a done-badder on release from prison. The idea is to ease the ex-con's transition into society. Or, as Lucy introduces herself to her "client" Terry Keegan, "I'm your guide and philosopher." Keegan, a young man from the wrong side of Ladbroke Grove, started pinching bottles of whiskey with his schoolmate Chippy when he was 12; now he's getting out of the big house after doing three years for breaking and entering. He knows his transition would be much easier without the likes of Lucy and sets out to lose her at the first opportunity. Complications ensue, especially when Chippy (now Leonard) McGrath, who has established a false front as an environmentally concerned businessman to disguise his thriving crime organization, enters the scene. Told in a nimble he-said, she-said format, the narrative cartwheels across all that is sanctimonious about prison reform for a delectable undoing of do-gooders. (Mar. 27) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.