Reviews for Patrick Butler for the Defense

The average rating for Patrick Butler for the Defense based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-30 00:00:00 Barbara Taylor One should always listen to one's friends. My friend Pierce told me about John Dickson Carr and his ability with "locked room" mysteries several years ago. Only a few months ago, I read The Man Who Couldn't Shudder, my first encounter with the versatile Mr. Carr, and realized the plot had been adapted for a Charlie Chan movie. The venerable Chinese detective from Honolulu took the place of Dr. Gideon Fell, the overweight but cerebral investigator who solves the case in the novel. But the mechanism by which a murder victim was killed while in a room nowhere near the murder weapon, was essentially the same. Next, I read Carr's much later Papa La Bas, mystery set in a historical timeframe in the New Orleans of the mid-19th century (Antebellum). If I thought the haunted mansion mystery of the first novel I read by the author was a clever Clue (or perhaps, more appropriately, given the location, Cluedo) mystery, the spooky New Orleans mystery was more like Arkham Horror, the game based on the Lovecraftian mythos. Oh, no one's sanity would be threatened by Papa La Bas but that's the way I see it. Now, I've read Patrick Butler for the Defense and it is Benny Hill meets the detective genre. It is a "locked room" murder, but it is also a rollercoaster ride of clever cul de sacs and misadventures. I could have compared the protagonist to Inspector Clouseau rather than the late and lonely comedian of British television, but the wild chases and womanizing under Patrick Butler's hat is more like the near-vaudevillian or music hall approach than the modus operandi of the fortuitous French detective. Now, in spite of the book's title, this really isn't as much about Patrick Butler, the barrister which Dr. Gideon Fell has allegedly turned into something of a legal genius for the defense--Horace Rumpole with better looks and and rather more lustful tendencies. The book is really about one Hugh Prentice (not to be confused with Hugh "Jim" Bissell -- say it out loud--of Capital Steps "infamy"), a barrister who avidly admires Butler and ends up trusting the eponymous barrister with his future and life leaves his office for a moment, only to discover that his client has been stabbed in his absence. Vital physical evidence points directly at Prentice such that no one believes in his innocence. Mistaken identities and "red herrings" as big as the balloons in the Macy's Parade, provide for laughs and that head-shaking feeling that things couldn't possibly get worse. But, of course, they do. Nothing really happens in this book in the way I expected it to happen. The twists and turns are more slapstick than one would expect from reading the other two novels I've read by the same author, but the comic nature of this adventure definitely underscores Carr's versatility and why he was prolific over such a time-frame. In fact, the comedic nature of this novel keeps me from leveling my star-slicing criticism. The clues in this novel are not fair. There is an aspect of consonance and assonance which involves a confusion between languages which is unfair because the conversation held in the foreign language is translated when it originally occurs and spelled out in the original language when Carr opts to reveal it. A lot of important data is hidden from the reader in much the way the fictional Lionel "22" Twain complains in Murder by Death. In spite of the perceived unfairness of the solution to the mystery, I can honestly state that I'm not sure what Carr's mental state was when he wrote this non-characteristic (or, at least, I think it is) novel, but I can tell you it certainly lifted mine. But for any of you fans of Benny Hill, I highly recommend that you play a recording of "Yakkity Sax" in the background as you read chapter 13.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-07-28 00:00:00 Donnie York The solicitor Patrick Butler has to help out a colleague on the run from the law after a client gets stabbed, seemingly impossibly, in his office. After reading this, I can't help but ask: What were you thinking, John? This novel, a locked room mystery, gives zero fucks about being a locked room mystery. Only perhaps 10% of the book is actually devoted to solving the murder case. The other 90 are spent running away from the police and awkwardly romancing various ladies. And the solution, when it finally comes, is too simple and unsatisfactory at best. Probably a one off, but not at all what I've come to expect from John Dickson Carr. Two stars simply for a good premise.