Word: voelker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bestseller lists: Anatomy of a Murder, by Robert Traver (TIME, Jan. 6). and By Love Possessed, by James Gould Cozzens (TIME, Sept. 2). The books handle "nice sharp quillets of the law" expertly, but differently. Anatomy of a Murder (the author, hiding behind a pen name, is John D. Voelker, justice of the Michigan Supreme Court) suffers from inexpert writing but describes in fascinating detail the elaborate, unpredictable mechanism that controls the outwardly simple scales of justice during a murder trial. A fact that has not harmed sales is that the case involves the rape of a luscious doll...
Crime does pay, especially when-as in this novel-it is 1) skillfully packaged as fiction, 2) taken by the Book-of-the-Month Club, 3) sold to the movies before publication, and 4) optioned by a Broadway producer. The payoff in this case goes to John D. Voelker, 54, a justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. Using the pseudonym of Robert Traver, he writes out of 23 years' experience as a trial lawyer and county prosecutor in Ishpeming (pop. 9,400), a mining center set amid the rocks, swamps and forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula...
...investigation and trial that follow. Biegler gets a series of rude shocks: luscious Laura's husband has a nasty disposition and a tendency to attack any man who admires his wife. There is some doubt that Laura was raped at all (in examining this problem, Author Voelker is even more clinical than James Gould Cozzens was in By Love Possessed). To make things still tougher for Defense Attorney Biegler, the prosecuting attorney-who is also Biegler's rival in an imminent congressional election-brings in a crack assistant from the attorney general's staff at the state...
...Justice Voelker knows the law and loves it, but his writing is as limp as a watch by Dali. All vigils are "lonely," vistas are always "sylvan." time "slips by on leaden wings." Yet, despite the leaden feet of the cliches, the book does move. Author Voelker's characters come most alive in the courtroom, in the thrust and parry of cross-examination and in the springing of tactical ambushes and legal traps by opposing counsel. It is quite ordinary writing but good entertainment, and few readers will turn aside until the fate of Lieut. Frederic Manion is finally...
...VOELKER...