Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The ABA's picks, 25 greatest law novels.

The Aug 2013 ABA Journal features the "25 Greatest Law Novels Ever." These include:

An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser 
• Anatomy of a Murder,
Robert Traver 
• Bleak House, Charles Dickens
• The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
• The Firm, John Grisham
• Native Son, Richard Wright
• The Ox-Bow Incident
,
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
The Paper Chase, John Jay Osborn Jr.
Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
QB VII, Leon Uris
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Some judges wrote essays on notable omissions such as Michelle Zierler on In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and Roz Myers on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone novel The Just and the Unjust by James Gould Cozzens. As an admirer of Cozzens's prose, I would not call his style "fusty," as Myers does. I'm also startled that not one Erle Stanley Gardner novel has been selected. (thanks to the Law and Humanities blog)

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