Horace Rumpole, the comic, courageous, and corpulent “great defender of muddled and sinful humanity,” is joined by a winning cast of villains and victims in this collection of six tales in which wry humor and sparkling wit deftly send up the British legal system.

In Rumpole and the Angel of Death, our hero achieves new, resounding triumphs over the forces of prejudice and mean-mindedness. One adventure involves Rumpole in the world of hunters and the hunted, animal rights and human wrongs, while in another he finds that international justice is as fallible as the domestic variety. And for the first time, Hilda, “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” tells a story all her own.