By Advice of Counsel

About the book

These seven stories follow the legal practice of Tutt and Tutt through disputes that expose the distance between formal procedure and fair treatment. In the opening story, a boy's red sweater helps turn a mistaken identification into a prosecution, while connections among police, politicians, and lawyers make correction far from automatic. Mr. Tutt's resourcefulness answers a system whose practical workings can favor the confident and well connected over the innocent. Arthur Train mixes courtroom ingenuity with satire, allowing arguments, technicalities, and human weaknesses to drive the action. The collection repeatedly asks what professional honor requires when ordinary institutional habits produce harmful results. Its legal world belongs to its historical setting, but the stories' dramatic interest lies in who understands the rules and who suffers when they are misused.

• Law and justice
• Professional ethics
• Institutional power

Why read it

The cases make procedural details dramatic by showing how directly they affect vulnerable people.

English collection with the March 1921 publication statement