She Must Be Obeyed

After a two-year break, the indomitable barrister Horace Rumpole returns in six sprightly new capers, including one told by his long-suffering wife Hilda, who proves to be every bit as canny as her crafty curmudgeon of a husband. As always, Mortimer writes with a Wodehousian elan but, unlike Wodehouse, he incorporates a spirited if indirect wrestling with the social and political issues of the day. In the title piece, an old judge with Alzheimer's is a posthumous figure in a case involving a doctor who is charged with unduly hastening the judge's end…