Is it a series writer’s responsibility to ensure that each installment stands alone? I had no prior familiarity with Deverell’s backlist, so the question kept coming up as I read Kill All the Judges, his 15th novel, and the fourth to feature not-quite-retired star defence lawyer Arthur Beauchamp. The novel’s first third spends much of its energy on an irreverent, almost postmodern satire about lawyer Brian Pomeroy’s grand delusions of novel-writing glory, with only occasional glimpses of Beauchamp. There’s a linear narrative lurking here, but Deverell seems more interested in how Pomeroy is losing his grip on his career, his marriage, and his enemies, all revealed in glimpses of his rather manic roman à clef.

But just as the reader is becoming acclimatized to the non-linear style and subversive sense of humour, Deverell wrenches the focus away from Pomeroy and moves it to Beauchamp. What’s left is more conventional and more disappointing. The irreverence dissipates in favour of Beauchamp’s reluctant return to the Vancouver courthouse to defend working-class poet Cudworth Brown on charges of killing a Supreme Court judge.

Deverell, the creator of Street Legal, displays his legal knowhow in an almost effortless fashion as witnesses line up to support or dispute Cud’s innocence, and there is a welcome subplot involving Beauchamp’s eco-activist wife Margaret making her maiden political voyage. But the net effect of Kill All the Judges evokes the title of Beauchamp’s previous appearance, the Arthur Ellis Award-winning
April Fool.

The big narrative switch assumes a familiarity with Beauchamp’s earlier cases and personality that should have been fleshed out more for newer readers, while poor Brian Pomeroy and his hell-raising downward spiral ends in tepid fashion, even as he turns out to be a necessary plot device. Deverell’s voice is amusing and witty, but its inconsistent delivery does him a disservice here.