The Painswick Line [Paperback]

Henry Cecil (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2009

Lucy Meeson-Smith works at a big bookmakers and is always backing winners. Her employers become suspicious and take her to court for fraud. At her trial it is revealed that her father, a vicar , studies form and is a brilliant tipster though he never bets himself. The judge in the case, Mr Justice Painswick has a thoroughly caddish son who is deeply in debt. These personalities are brought together in a lively and unexpected way in this witty, upbeat novel.

Editorial Reviews

Review

‘It is full of entrancing legal and clerical detail and extremely high-spirited. I recommend it with confidence.’ -- C.P. Snow, Sunday Times

About the Author

Judge Henry Cecil Leon was born in Norwood Green Rectory near London in 1902. In 1923 he was called to the Bar and between 1949 to 1967 he served as a county court judge. He developed his writing skills while serving with the British Army during the Second World War, telling stories to officers to keep their minds off alcohol while sailing on ‘dry’ ships. These formed the basis of his first collection, Full Circle, published in 1948. Thereafter the law and official functions provided the main source for many of his stories and plays. Cecil had an extraordinary ability to examine the law in both a humorous and a more serious, analytical way, providing a series of thought provoking works. The titles being published by House of Stratus include some of his best known work, many of which have been filmed, notably Brothers in Law and Alibi for a Judge. Though his books deal with the legal system many have more than an element of the mystery/thriller genre about them.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: House of Stratus (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842320610
• ISBN-13: 978-1842320617
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,481,371 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:

4.0 out of 5 stars Colourful and light-hearted legal humour, March 21, 2006

By 

V.Harishankar "Harishankar" (India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Painswick Line (Paperback)

By a combination of circumstances, a respectable High Court Judge is forced to receive winning tips on the races from a parson known to find winners by a foolproof system but who never backs them himself, because his son is a rogue who commits a variety of white-collar crimes to make money and is now in danger of being convicted if he cannot find enough money to pay his creditors.

Enter "The Painswick Line".

It's a fascinating and humourous tale of a High Court judge who finds that being a Judge is far from straightforward, and not just for the usual reasons. Henry Cecil's plots are fascinating because of the stamp of authenticity in his legal writing and so creates a combination of fantasy and legal fiction to spin a wonderful tale.

Cecil's deep knowledge of the legal system allows him to visualize plots and situations which would ordinarily never occur to the lay writer. The novel itself is not one coherent story by itself, but a series of episodes which are logically linked one after the other. However, the story does shift focus from the Judge himself to his son in the second half, when we witness the methods used by the ingenious, but criminal-minded Martin Painswick, to extract money from unwilling victims. Cecil also occasionally takes a dig at the absurd contradictions of the Law and also sometimes digresses into making general observations about it. But these are few and far between and don't generally break the flow of the novel.

In this novel, Cecil also shows how differently he can write. The mood is almost always light-hearted in this particular novel, but he has shown that he can write seriously as well. With such versatility with the pen and with such a knowledge of the Law as well, it is no doubt that he always produces fine works of legal fiction.

Highly recommended...