Legal Fictions: Short Stories about Lawyers and the Law

Mining a rich lode of writing, Wishingrad applies a broad interpretation of the law to include naturally dramatic courtroom and law-firm stories along with those about lawyers in private life and others about legal battles conducted without the aid of attorneys. The works by contemporary authors treat subjects ranging from a lawyer's visit to his ex-wife (in Marian Thurm's intimate ``Still Life'') to a 1980s takeover casualty (in Louis Auchincloss's ``The Tender Offer'') to a dangerous liaison between an outlaw and his rival's family (in Isabel correct sp Allende's operatic, magical ``The Judge's Wife''). Selections and stories by Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Thomas Wolfe, John Mortimer and Graham Greene are included; Garrison Keillor and Ian Frazier are among the contributors to the section on humor. This well-chosen collection offers incontestable evidence of the enduring value of lawyers and the law in the world of fiction--if nowhere else. (Sept.)