Arthur Beauchamp Series by William Deverell
Arthur Beauchamp #1
Trial of Passion
William Deverell
Arthur Beauchamp, a heralded criminal lawyer, has moved to a quiet island off the British Columbia coast. While trying to recover from a marriage gone sour, his retirement is interrupted by his former law partners-they want Arthur to take charge of the defense trial of Jonathan O'Donnell, the acting dean of a law school. O'Donnell has been accused of rape by one of the students, Kimberley Martin, a smart but arrogant woman who is engaged to a rich businessman. After much pleading, Beauchamp agrees to handle the case. He is drawn into complex legal situations dealing with gender and sex, while his personal life takes a provocative turn as well. A courtroom drama ensues, with unpredictable twists and bizarre events.Review"Beauchamp is a marvelous character"--The Globe and MailFrom the Inside Flap"Brimming with sardonic wit and zippy phrases...roller coaster twists of passion"--The Toronto StarArthur Beauchamp is Vancouver's leading criminal attorney. He's also an alcoholic with an unfaithful wife and a desperate need for solitude. So when he turns his back on his life and settles down on an island off the Pacific coast, it looks like a premature but very permanent retirment. Then one last case draws him back. The dean of law at a local university is charged with the sadomasochistic rape of one of his students. The evidence against the defendant is overwhelming. And he's lied again and again--to the police, his therapist, his attorneys. If anyone can save him, Beauchamp can. But first Beauchamp has to save himself--from the memories of his painful past and the torment of his inner demons. And then he has to face the choice that has haunted him throughout his career: does he serve his client--or tell the truth?
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Arthur Beauchamp #2
April Fool
William Deverell
ReviewWinner of the 2006 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel“April Fool thrusts itself brashly into the reader’s psyche like a lumber-jacketed logger at a black-tie affair. Ruggedly individualistic, demanding and determined, its characters are shrewdly etched and realistically rendered.” — Globe and Mail“Deverell brings back one of his classic characters, wily B.C. Queen’s Counsel Arthur Beauchamp, in this droll, witty novel about crime in the Gulf Islands.” — Toronto Sun“The dialogue crackles, the style is sharp and compelling, and it’s a treat to spend another book with Beauchamp.” — Vancouver Sun “Deverell burrows into Beauchamp’s soul, and we see almost everything unfold through his addled but fascinating perspective.” — *Vancouver Province “Deverell writes breathless prose, commas flying here and there with exuberant abandon, as he dissects the nuttiness of his various locations. . . . April Fool spills over with idiosyncratic characters.” — Edmonton Journal“Hugely entertaining.” — Calgary Herald “Deverell is one of Canada’s best and funniest mystery writers.” — Ottawa Citizen*“Readers gladly follow all of Deverell’s distinctly drawn characters through tiny outposts on Canada’s West Coast to the courtrooms of Victoria and Vancouver and the fine hotels of Europe. He is a master storyteller with a wonderful sense of humour. The story flows effortlessly, and readers are twigs on the river, along for one hell of a ride.” — Quill & Quire“[Deverell] is a hugely amusing and self-assured writer, and when you have his gifts it is hard to go wrong.” — National Post<br... Product DescriptionAn irresistible story of justice heading off the rails.Arthur Beauchamp, the scholarly, self-doubting legend of the B.C. criminal bar (and one of Deverell’s most amiable — and crafty — protagonists), is enjoying his retirement as a hobbyist farmer on B.C.’s Garibaldi Island when he is dragged back to court to defend an old client. Nick “the Owl” Faloon, once one of the world’s top jewel thieves, has been accused of raping and murdering a psychologist. Beauchamp has scarcely registered how unlikely it is that the diminutive Faloon has hurt anyone when his own personal life takes an abrupt turn. His new wife, Margaret Blake, organic farmer and environmental activist, has taken up residence fifty feet above ground in a tree she is determined to save for the eagles and from the loggers. Beauchamp shuttles between Vancouver and the island, doing what he can to save the tree and get his wife back — and defend Faloon.Part courtroom thriller, part classic whodunit, April Fool sees Deverell writing at the top of his form as he puts these characters through some entertaining and very surprising twists and turns.From the Hardcover edition.
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Arthur Beauchamp #3
Kill All the Judges
William Deverell
This bestselling sequel to the award-winning April Fool is a fastpaced, laugh-out-loud story of madness, murder, and mayhem. Is someone systematically killing the judges of the B.C. bar? At least one has been murdered and several have disappeared. Arthur Beauchamp returns from retirement once again to take on the case, this time defending his former nemesis, backwoods poet Cudworth Brown, and tracking down a mystery novel that Brown’s demented former lawyer has been writing – all this just as his own wife, Margaret, has announced her candidacy for the Green Party in a forthcoming federal by-election. Complex, madcap, and peopled with some of the most delightfully eccentric characters to be found between two covers, Kill All the Judges more than proves William Deverell’s mastery of the hilarious crime novel. From the Hardcover edition.Review“Kill All the Judges* finds [Deverell] at the top of his game. . . . A vastly entertaining criminal proceeding.” – Toronto Star “Expert crackling wit, laugh-out-loud crime and madcap characters.” – Canadian Living “Compelling. . . . For all its seemingly lighthearted humour, this is a work of great depth and complexity.” – Globe and Mail “There’s a reason why people flock to hear William Deverell. . . . He’s a master of the laugh-out-loud crime novel.” – Vancouver Sun “In translating the drama of the courtroom to the novel, B.C.’s William Deverell is rivalled only by Rumpole’s John Mortimer.” – Toronto Star “A delightful, witty and satisfying read.” – BC BookWorld* From the Hardcover edition.About the AuthorWilliam Deverell’s acclaimed first novel, Needles, which drew on his experiences as a criminal lawyer, won the $50,000 Seal Award. Since then he has published thirteen further novels, including Trial of Passion, for which he won the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing and Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel. He won the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award again in 2006 for April Fool. He winters in Costa Rica and spends his summers on Pender Island in B.C.
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Arthur Beauchamp #4
Snow Job
William Deverell
In bestselling Deverell’s latest hilarious mystery, Arthur Beauchamp moves to Ottawa, and all hell breaks loose Arthur Beauchamp has followed his wife, the leader and first elected member of the Green Party, to Ottawa. But he hates it there: the cold, the politics, and his place in his wife’s shadow. So when a delegation of government officials from Bhashyistan is blown sky high on Bronson Avenue and the shares of a Calgary-based oil company promptly drop like a stone, Arthur is only too happy to jump to the defence of the missing suspected assassin. Deverell’s latest Arthur Beauchamp novel cranks the wily old lawyer’s adventures up several notches, and then some. It’s wildly imaginative, utterly Canadian, and irresistibly funny. From the Hardcover edition.From Publishers WeeklyIn Arthur Ellis Award–winner Deverell's rambling third novel to feature crafty lawyer Arthur Beauchamp (after 2008's Kill All the Judges), Igor Muckhali Ivanovich (aka Mad Igor), the dictator of the People's Republic of Bhashyistan (formerly part of the U.S.S.R.), declares war on Canada after a diplomatic delegation from the Central Asian nation is blown to bits while visiting Ottawa. Beauchamp and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) agent Ray DiPalma (the shape-shifting spy who never came in from the cold) go to Albania, where kidnappers have taken Arthur's client, Abzal Erzhan, the prime suspect in the terrorist incident. The Canadian political satire may be of less interest to U.S. readers than a subplot involving three Saskatchewan women who go AWOL from a tour of Bhashyistan during the conflict. The journal extracts written by one of them about the three finding shelter with the Bhashyistani Democratic Revolutionary Front have a sharp focus the main plot lacks. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review"Smart, beautifully written, and really, really funny satire featuring Arthur Beauchamp, one of Canadian crime fiction's truly original characters. The best novel by Deverell ever." — Margaret Cannon, *Globe and Mail "Though the story is dead serious at its heart, Deverell has much material that is as funny as anything he's written." — Toronto Star "Fine writing and tongue-in-cheek delivery with acid shots at our political circus, and so close to reality that it seems even funnier. A must-read." — Hamilton Spectator"Deverell's imagination gets high marks for postulating what happens when an obscure country declares war on Canada." — Quill & Quire* From the Hardcover edition.
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Arthur Beauchamp #5
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel
William Deverell
This fifth in the bestselling, award-winning Arthur Beauchamp series finds the outwardly crusty, poetry-loving, wily old lawyer compelled, by new developments, to look back at his first -- and most disastrous -- murder trial. While renewing his annual try for the Most Points in Vegetables and Fruits at the Garibaldi Island Fall Fair, Arthur Beauchamp is forced by new developments to revisit his first murder trial, which went horribly wrong. Now, nearly 50 years later, he is opening old wounds but also facing a chance for redemption and reconciliation. From the Hardcover edition.ReviewPraise for William Deverell: "Deverell is one of Canada's best and funniest mystery writers."— Ottawa Citizen"Vastly entertaining. . . . Deverell is rivalled only by Rumpole's John Mortimer." — Toronto Star "Deverell is a master of the laugh-out-loud crime novel." — Vancouver Sun From the Hardcover edition.About the AuthorWILLIAM DEVERELL has published some fifteen novels. I'll See You In My Dreams is the fifth in his bestselling Arthur Beauchamp series: the first, Trial of Passion, won the prestigious Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing and Canada's Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award; the second, April Fool, also won the Arthur Ellis Award; the third, Kill All the Judges, was a finalist for the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal; and the fourth, Snow Job, was a Globe and Mail Best Book. One of the creators of the TV series Street Legal, Deverell winters in Costa Rica and spends his summers on Pender Island, British Columbia.
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