Quite Honestly - Tapa dura

Life couldn't be better for Lucinda Purefoy. Granted it's a little embarrassing, her father being the Bishop of Aldershot, but she's got a steady boyfriend, a degree in social sciences from Manchester University and the offer of a job in advertising. With all that, she felt she should 'pay back her debt to society' and 'do a little good in the world'.

That's why she joined SCRAP (short for 'Social Carers, Reformers and Praeceptors'), an organization which trains girls like Lucy to become the 'guide, philosopher and friend' to ex-convicts coming out of prison, to find them a job, a home and to encourage them to kick the habit of stealing things.

And so Lucy finds herself standing outside the gates of Wormwood Scrubs, on a windy March morning, waiting to greet her first SCRAP 'client', a career-burglar called Terry Keegan. What happens next confounds expectations and produces a story full of surprises.

With a cast of characters that rivals anything in his famous Rumpole stories and a compulsive plot, Quite Honestly is a wonderfully comic novel, packed with John Mortimer's entertaining reflections on crime.