William Deverell is certainly one of my favourite writers. A true master of the detective and mystery genre, he is also the very best ambassador of West Coast Canada. Winner of the Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in North America Crime Writing, he is to British Columbia what Janet Evanovitch is to Chicago and Ian Rankin is to Scotland.
When I recently had the joy of working with a compassionate american hospital lawyer, I thanked him with a hard cover gift of William Deverell’s “April Fool.”
In book charades I once symbolically stabbed the lawyer son of the most remarkable host and hostess who’d graciously invited me into the warmth and charm of their talented family and luxurious home. The quote from Shakespeare came to the mind of one of the other guests but none knew of William Deverell’s book. I felt a fool explaining that it was a book, really, by trial lawyer William Deverell. The very sharp and amusing young lawyer responded, “Not to worry, I’m a contract lawyer“.
Meanwhile his mother clearly a female bear about her children eyed me suspiciously. She’d just told a story of her mother arming her to fend off attackers in the night during an African rebellion. One doesn’t jest even symbolically of harming an African mother’s child.
Now what would Author Beauchamp have done in my place? Somehow got the lovely lady off for justifiable homicide citing my long list of past dinner party faux pas, no doubt.
Author Beauchamp is one of Deverell’s most delightful characters, an aging Victoria barrister married and deeply in love with a vivacious modern environmentalist. It’s tempting to ask how much this characterization resembles himself and his lovely wife in their Gulf Island home. Successful trial lawyer he became the writer of outstanding television series Street Legal. His early book, “Kill all the Lawyers” has been followed by his latest 2008 book “Kill all the Judges”.
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