The Second Man

Several of these early winners are out of print. My copy of "The Second Man" is a yellowed, liver-spotted hardback. It smells of dusty libraries and dingy storerooms. It's delicious.

The book itself is less redolent of its times than you might fear from a synopsis, though it still has a distinct 1950s air. The central character is Marion Kerrison, a barrister newly arrived in an unnamed northern town that is clearly Sheffield and has clearly never seen a woman wearing a barrister's wig before. You might expect this setup to lead inevitably to her game conquest of the man's world, allowing the author displaying their impeccable egalitarian credentials—after all, would you premise your novel so if you were going to do your heroine down? show more And expecting this, you might be wary, because often what looked impeccably egalitarian in the 1950s is apt to seem rather cringeworthy today.

But Grierson doesn't actually seem that interested in his clash-of-genders premise, nor in proving that he's on the right side. The novel is narrated in the first person by a chambers colleague of Kerrison. This is a neat distancing trick that proofs against posterity; we don't quite know whether the condescending stuff about women's emotional nature and so on is due to the author or the character. But it also distances the narrator from the protagonist. Kerrison very sensibly avoids the boy's clubs of the lawyers' mess and such, and so is often absent as the narrator drinks loyal toasts, passes port, and sinks snooker balls. The narrator positions himself between his overtly reactionary colleagues and those who fall over themselves to offer patronising support. He doesn't seem to care too much; nor does the author.

So what does the author care about? Not the central plot: there's some mystery, but we're effectively told whodunnit early on, and the remaining howdunnit questions aren't especially taxing. Not the quarter-hearted romance subplot, which really seems to be there due to a vague sense of novelistic necessity. Rather, and rather nicely, he cares about the practice of the law: the conduct of trials, the nuances of cross-examination, day to day life in chambers and courts.

Given that Grierson was a barrister who wrote fiction and crime novels on the side, perhaps this isn't too surprising, but it's still striking, and strikingly well done. The book is excellently paced, with a few short chapters leading up to two long ones that describe in great detail the trial at the novel's heart. After these, a few more short chapters wrap things up briskly. It's really those two central chapters where the interest of the novel lies. They are very good, written with verve, dramatic without melodrama, the obvious product of deep involvement with what's being described. They're worth reading the book for. The defendant at the trial is also a well-drawn character, perhaps better drawn than the protagonist or narrator.

Very well. A good, competent, engaging legal mystery. But why exactly did this win an award? Was competent and engaging good enough in 1956? (I suppose reading the other books shortlisted that year might provide a clue, but life's too short) Was the award jury swinging back towards the familiar certitudes of law and trial after the dalliance with ethical thinking the year before? Hard to say, but I'd more happily read further Grierson than further Graham. show less

A very good courtroom mystery. The narrator, Michael Irvine, is a barrister in an unnamed Yorkshire city. His colleague, Marion Kerrison, is a female barrister--a novelty in the 1950s. Michael is junior to Marion in defending the accused, John Maudsley, at trial for the murder of his aunt. The problem: His aunt's companion, Jane Birman, will testify that she saw Maudsley descending the stairs at the aunt's house the evening of the murder. Grierson writes a compelling trial for the middle third of the book, and there's an interesting appeal scene as well.

PR6013 .R7 S4 1956 (VJH)