Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 A fine novel about lawyers and life.... September 18, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Abner Coates is a 31-year-old assistant district attorney in 1939 Childerstown, and the reader perches on his shoulder as he and his boss, Marty Bunting, prosecute a case against two accused kidnappers and killers. From opening arguments to the verdict, the Commonwealth judicial processes are witnessed by us as Abner sits at the prosecutors table, examines witnesses, and confers with Marty. We also go with Ab to the attorney's room where he and colleagues banter and do some lawyering as needed.
Abner comes from a line of lawyers. His judge father, at home struggling to recover from a stroke, eagerly awaits Abner's lunchtime or suppertime reports from the historic old courthouse. Old Judge Coates also thinks Abner should get married, and fortunately, there's just the girl (and we go along on a couple of their dates), but Ab isn't sure he can afford to get hitched yet. He is wrestling with whether he should run for D. A. in the next election. Marty plans to move on to a more prestigious position, and he and the local party boss think Abner is their replacement. But young Coates has doubts. He worries the party boss will ask for political favors, and he also knows being the D.A. would place a lot more responsibility on him than he currently carries as A. D. A.
Other legal issues -- like a vehicular manslaughter case in which culpability is in doubt -- do take some of Abner's time. But mainly, he's in court trying to "burn" the two men who admit to participating in the kidnapping of another less-than-upstanding fellow, but claim they should not be held accountable for his murder because they personally were unarmed and thought they were taking him home when they all got in the car with the actual shooter. Abner and Marty rely on the letter of the law, which says that in the commission of a crime, if another crime occurs, all perpetrators are guilty of both offenses. But the question is, what will the jury do?
THE JUST AND THE UNJUST (published in 1942) is a methodical education of not only the legal process, but of the time. The reader learns about how people (admittedly, men mainly) thought and interacted on the cusp of war. Abner tells his father that when the war comes, " '...I guess all bets are off.' " Judge Coates retorts, " 'Don't be so cynical.' " He says, " 'A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset.' " The old man knows his son. Abner sometimes acts spoiled and entitled -- just notice the way he treats the family servants. But, he's also a man who, by keen observation, makes corrections and seeks always to do the right thing.
In the end, this venerable 65-year-old book is perhaps most valuable as a meticulous, fictional journal of a time now gone. The court case and its lessons are still quite relevant, but reading THE JUST AND THE UNJUST as a time capsule, as a window to history, is where it's really at.
 Just Wonderful April 21, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A week after finishing The Just and the Unjust, I'm still going through withdrawal, my heart sinking when I remember I have no more of it to read and have gone on to a lesser book.
With perfect, unflamboyant words, Cozzens conveys one distinct personality after another. A scene I'll never forget (not a plot spoiler) is one of the regular summer-evening get-togethers of the rural county gentry (in Pennsylvania, I think), on a barge pulled along a canal by mules, with all the camaraderie and antagonism and silly behavior of people whose families have known each other for generations.
Little details of life in the late 1930s are appealing: lifting the receiver and asking an operator (an actual human being!) to connect you to someone else; nights so quiet the courthouse clock can be heard tolling from far off; a character saying things were "different in the 'seventies" and meaning the 1870s.
While the law is interesting, even to non-attorneys, it's Cozzens' people--their hesitation, cockiness, indecision, mistakes, compromises--their humanity--who make this book really compelling.
 A Look Backward In Time - To What the Law Used To Be February 21, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
James Gould Cozzens was a first class witer of American novels in the 1930s-50s and I think I read most of his books, including this one, as they were published (this one coming out in 1942). I don't think I finished it then; and I just couldn't finish it now - 65 years later. I'm sorry, but I thought this was - and is - a rather ordinary story about a rather dull Assistant District Attorney named Abner Coates trying a slam bang first degree murder case, complete with an eye witness to everything turned state's evidence, against a defense lawyer who can't keep his mouth shut and is a sure foil for any of us who have been around the courfoom for a while. (By way of disclosue: This reviewer has been a member of the Bar since 1940 and spent nearly 25 years as a real trial lawyer and another 25 years in the courtroom as a trial judge, active and on assignment.)
Reading this book is much like looking at the ads in an old Life Magaazine or Saturday Evening Post . Everyone smokes cigaettes; you drive a car "letting the clutch out': people wear hats and linen suits in the summer; no mention of air conditioning in the hot stuffy courtroom in the Pennsylvania summer; one of the defendans uses "opium" insstead of heroin; and at a party on a barge cocktails are mixed in a cocktail shker - no wine mentioned.
It was, however, a time of innocence, of lives lived more simply than we live them today. The court reporter takes the testimony in shorthand; the judge is your 1940s picture of the proper judge - an elderly white male who is respected, almost venerated, and who rules his courtroom with proper decorum. No chit-chat; no repartee. The courtroom and courthouse are models of what all of us who have lived our professional lives in court would like them to be - a venerable building in a green tree-shaded square in the middle of a small Pennsylvania town (population 4,500) where everyone knows everyone else. There's a community here which we lack today; and I for one liked the way Cozzens spread it out for us.
However, in thinking back on the book as I write this, it seems to me that what really put me off was Cozzens style. Yes, it was descriptive; but it wsn't exciting. He could draw a petty good word picture of a party on a barge, for example, but he couldn't get me the reader there to experienced it . Nor could I really get to know his characters. Sorry, but that's the way it was for me; and I just had other things to do , so about 200 pages into the book I put it down.
However, if you want to step back in time and sit through a murder trial in a small town in 1940 by all means read this book.
A satisfying novel from the old school January 8, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You have to remember that this is not exactly contemporary fiction. If you want to read a well-written story about a different time in America, you will enjoy this book immensely. But don't expect special effects, they hadn't been invented yet.
First modern novel on lawyers--before Grisham! November 3, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a fine and thoughtful novel--good English,very important topic, very human maturing lawyer who learns that the noble citizens are too often unjust and that some of the "bad guys" often are seeking to be just. Some important passages will only be fully understood by lawyers. I had been told that Anatomy of a Murder (late 60's) was the first pre-Grisham book. It is a fine book and made a good movie. The Just and the Unjust (40's) is, I think, clearly better--the law, the lawyers, the reality, and the humanism of many lawyers. I hope Amazon can resurrect ths book, at least for some.
Herb Benington
Vienna VA
age 78 and growing
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