Customer Reviews

Unlawful occasions

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Is Mr.Sampson a blackmailer? What secrets does he know? What will he do with his knowledge? All these thoughts are haunting the beautiful Mrs. Verney day and night. When she cannot deal with the assaults anymore she decides to talk to her neighbor Mr. Culsworth, who is a successful lawyer. When he hears her story, he is directly and without reservations committed to put an end to this dreadful and felonious practice. Never did he suspect what the impact of his investigations would be. Not only Mrs. Verney seems to be in trouble, also her would-be savior gets in a mess without equal.

Henry Cecil was a County Court Judge for more than 25 years before he started his life as a full-time writer. This experience has made him perceptive to numerous absurd contradictions in the British legal system. In Unlawful Occasions, written in 1962, he paints with quite some pungent sense of humor the life of a professional blackmailer. Unlawful Occasions is in a sense a detective story, but without any dead bodies. This does not mean that there are no skeletons in the closet, on the contrary.

The strongest point in the book is the unpredictable twist of plot in the end. Combined with the comic genius of Cecil, it makes this book a real treat.

I've been reading Henry Cecil for ages. He was a barrister and judge, and his books are delightfully humorous accounts of activities in the law courts and lawyers' and judges' chambers. Every so often, I come across one of his works that I haven't read before. Unlawful Occasions is one of those.

Brian Culsworth, barrister-at-law, is sought out for advice one day by the tenant above his chambers, one Mrs. Venery. She has had a visit from a man who appears to be a blackmailer. I say "appears" because he is quite clever at avoiding a direct threat, but merely insinuates. At the same time, Culsworth is representing a man who is suing for his share of a win in the pools (lottery to us Yanks!). His client's habit of speaking his mind directly gets him in trouble in court, and Culsworth's efforts to get him out of it may expose him to the tender mercies of the blackmailer.

As with all Cecil's work, there's a twist or two, and the story is told with a dry wit that goes well with a gin and tonic.