by Jane Gardam (2004)

Sir Eddie Feathers is known among colleagues as “Old Filth” (for “failed in London, try Hong Kong”). A much-admired lawyer, he has earned a prosperous career, a prestigious judgeship and a reputation for probity that seems at odds with the elusive par-ticulars of his past. Gardam’s gifts of observation give her prose the verve of satire, but the pulse of her humanity brings life to the details of Filth’s fading life.

Note: Gardam is 85 and has completed a trilogy based on Eddie Feathers. Noted Hugo Lindgren, editor of the New York Times Magazine: “Her prose is so perceptive and fluid that it feels mentally healthful, exiling the noise and clutter of your mind as efficiently as a Schubert sonata. She could make actuarial tables pleasurable.”