Judicial Whispers [Hardcover]

Caro Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2000

The whispers begin when Leo Davies, charming, clever barrister in one of London's most prestigious chambers, applies to take silk.Despite a life of seemingly unflawed social and professional brilliance, Leo has made a mistake: he is suspected of having a lurid and peculiar sexual past.With too many skeletons in his closet, Leo decides that in order to achieve the coveted position of Queen's Council, the rumors must be scotched.And as desperate times call for desperate measures, he resolves to find a suitable woman and preferably marry her.Thus begins a quest in which Leo, determined that his ambition will not be thwarted, sets out to woo and win the perfect, beautiful solicitor Rachael Dean.But Leo has taken on more than he bargained for: Rachael not only has a dazzling career in front of her, but also a dark and frightening past.Leo's tangled, sophisticated life, Rachael's newly awakened passions, and the unrequited love of a bright young barrister, Anthony Cross, form the intricate cat's cradle at the heart of this absorbing novel.In a tale of relationships, deceit and ambition, Caro Fraser brings to life with uncanny accuracy the obsessions and delusions of people in love.AUTHORBIO: Before turning to writing full-time, Caro Fraser worked as a shipping lawyer.She lives in London with her husband, a solicitor, and their four children.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A rumor campaign threatens to thwart London barrister Leo Davies's hope of election to that rarefied strata of the British legal hierarchy, the Queen's Counsel. The rumors are based on truth, for Leo's sex life is hardly conventional. In a typical mystery novel, such a scenario would lead to blackmail or murder--or both. But Caro Fraser's new novel is neither typical nor a mystery. All of the drama in this character study of a fascinating protagonist comes from Leo's interior struggle with issues of sex, love, class, and ambition. The real mystery is how erroneously this book has been cast as a legal thriller.

Advised that the best way to scotch the rumors is to take a wife, Leo becomes involved with Rachel Dean, a beautiful and emotionally rigid solicitor who has good reason to be so guarded. That Leo's close friend Anthony also covets Rachel might initially strike readers as an unnecessary diversion, but Fraser brilliantly uses the men's relationship to illuminate Leo's complicated sexual nature, which is enacted in his courtship of Rachel and his almost inadvertent wakening of her sexual passion. "There's too much fear in you," Leo says when Anthony charges him with using Rachel to further his own ambitions. "Don't you remember? Or don't you want to remember? There are things you don't want to confront--things about Rachel that you'll never understand. You're empty. You're devoid of anything that could help her, because you've never been to that part of yourself where you find out things, the best and the worst. But you're young. You'll learn." Leo's journey through the tortuous landscape of his own mental inferno makes for compelling reading in a sophisticated and engrossing novel. --Jane Adams

From Booklist

Leo Davis, a handsome middle-aged gay barrister, is featured as the main character of this English legal drama. Clever Leo has a successful career, but his love life is more intriguing than the courtroom scenes or the closed-door legal meetings. But his eyebrow-raising sex life hinders his career advancement, and when he charms a beautiful solicitor, Rachel Dean, into loving him, they provide the almost perfect image of a conservative and heterosexual couple. Young Anthony, a budding barrister, comes to love both Leo and Rachel; and the cast is rounded out with Rachel's secretary, Felicity, who is--what else?--curvaceous as well as being sexually harassed by the office manager. For all their smarts, everyone in this melodrama is in love with the wrong person, but at least the characters are all good-looking and well dressed. Whatever! Michelle Kaske
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 345 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1ST edition (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312261861
• ISBN-13: 978-0312261863
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,073,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars British Excellence, November 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Judicial Whispers (Hardcover)

The characters of this book, even though not the happiest lot, were so well developed that I felt as if I knew them. Ms. Fraser is able to write in such a way that you befriend each one of them, wishing that you could help them out of their triangular dilemma: Anthony loves Rachel who loves Leo who loves Anthony. Certainly not a happy ending, but a realistic and practical one for all involved. My favorite character was Rachel's secretary, Felicity, hopelessly zany and unorganized, but so likeable. I also was interested in the intriguing British court system which is so unlike ours. This book keeps your interest high from cover to cover and is well worth reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Judicial Whispers ready for "Masterpiece Theater", May 19, 2000

By 

Jerilynn M. Schumacher - See all my reviews

This review is from: Judicial Whispers (Hardcover)

Caro Fraser's "Judicial Whispers" reads as if she wrote it for the PBS "Masterpiece Theater" series. There are tons of characters. The thoughts and movements of everyone of them have been detailed as if giving actors directions. What should have been included in this novel, originally published in 1995 and just now being released by St. Martin's Press, is a glossary or preface explaining British legal terms. That would help Americans follow the story better. Advocate Leo Davies, 44, wants to "take silk" and become a "Queens Counsel." There's no explanation what this means to the London lawyer, though it's apparent that Leo's elegant flat (apartment), country home and sexual exploits with young men and women won't be enough to satisfy him if he doesn't get voted in by a gaggle of aging judges. So Leo, taking a suggestion from one of the more open minded of the judges, decides to hide his bisexuality by dating a nice girl over the winter. The liaison, he decides, will last until the silks, whatever they may be, are awarded at Easter. It almost sounds as if the author is setting up a "La Cage aux Folles" type of plot, with lots of punch lines and pratfalls. Fraser isn't. Her thoughts are darker, more sinister. At a boring reception, Leo picks up a stoned young woman who happens to be the beautiful and brilliant attorney, Rachel Dean. Rachel has deep flaws. She's been physically abused by men in the past and can't love or make love. Leo, of course, easily breaks through her ice and she falls for him, spurning another young lawyer, Anthony Cross. Cross, a past protege of Leo's, may be ambivalent about his sexuality but he knows he loves the cool, aloof Rachel. Cross becomes cross with Leo for stealing his prize. The most human character in an otherwise stiff bunch is Felicity, Rachel's bumbling secretary. It's Felicity's inept typing, copying and mailing skills that help move the plodding plot along. There are lots of other minor characters, such as the office manager who sexually harasses Felicity, Leo's mother, some of Leo's past lovers and Felicity's boyfriend, who beats up the groping office manager. Those who watch "Masterpiece Theater" know that British drama doesn't usually reach the emotional crescendo American television programs do. "Judicial Whispers" recounts a bumpy time in Leo's life, but there is no showdown or retribution for his manipulating and philandering ways. "Judicial Whispers" might be just right for someone who wants to enjoy a PBS-type story line without having to look at a picture tube.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Authors Should Show, Not Tell, July 2, 2000

By 

RuthAlice "ruthalice" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Judicial Whispers (Hardcover)

First, let me vent a little about the marketing. The cover blurb mentions Rumpole of the Bailey, implying the book will be similar. Not hardly. This is not a mystery, there is no mystery to be found in this story whatsoever. The legal machinations that the reader sees are merely part of the background, setting up ways for characters to meet, to work together and to inhabit a life. No case is followed and no case has any bearing on the events of the story other than as a plot vehicle to move A to B and so on.

However, just because I felt misled by the marketing doesn't have anything to do with the book itself. The plot is interesting, the characters are sufficiently complex that I should want to know what happened to them, though I didn't engage as fully with them as I could have if the author had more discipline.

Authors should show, not tell, allowing a reader to infer the character's motivation. By leaving that up to the reader, the author will draw the reader in to the story, breathe life into the characters and make the reader care about the characters. This is because the reader has played an active role in coming to understand the characters' motivations.

When the author, as Caro Fraser does relentlessly, leads you through the characters' motivations step by step, explaining everything as fully as possible, then you don't have to actively engage to understand the characters. Inevitably, you are not going to care as much about the characters as when you have to think about why they are doing something.

One example will suffice. A senior clerk in the chambers fears that he will be shuffled off into retirement if Leo takes silk. How does the reader know that? Because Caro Fraser puts the reader into the clerk's mind while he thinks about this and decides to try to derail Leo's application.

How could she have presented this differently? She could have had the clerk find out about the application, talk about it with someone who points out the possibility of this affecting his own supervisor, and then a conversation where he stars his whispering campaign against Leo. Then the reader would wonder why he did that and try to understand. If Fraser wanted to insure that the reader got it, she could then insert another conversation with the clerk spreading some gossip, the recipient of that gossip wondering why and then going AHA, you think that if Leo gets the.... This way, the reader who wants to be engaged in the story will have an opportunity to figure it out and the AHA will confirm it and the reader that can't figure it out would still get the motivation handed to him or her, but not before having time to think about it a bit. Instead, it's all laid out in one fell swoop, a shortcut that cuts short any possibility of fully engaging in the story.

He's a minor character and taking a shortcut with him is okay, but when altogether too many characters and every single one of the main characters have their actions explained it's tiresome and, as I have said, disconnects the reader from fully caring about anyone.

This story has great potential. Many of the characters are written to be likeable, even Leo whose actions are motivated by single-minded and selfish ambition. I think, however, that I would like him better if I was left alone to work out his motives.

As a reader, I dislike it when an authors tells instead of shows. It implies that the author doesn't trust her readers to "get it" without her intervention.

If you have nothing better to read, you can spend a couple mindless hours with this book without coming to any harm. However, reading it as written is an exercise in detachment. I prefer to read books that more fully engage me and it is a testament to some subtle skill on Caro Fraser's part that I bothered to finish it at all.