A Week on Mount Olympus

Charlie Walden is the Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, where he had hoped for a quiet life, but has found it to be anything but. With the job of balancing the needs of prosecutors, judges, 'Grey Smoothies', the humourless grey-suited civil servants, and the overall needs of a Crown Court he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace and his own delightful humour. Charlie is confronted by a number of topical issues he hadn't anticipated; invited to join the Court of Appeal he finds himself faced with a case involving the 'confusion' of one of his team. In another a teacher must be penalised for defacing a statue, a huge and mysterious cat comes to the rescue in yet another case, and so the harassed Judge must pick his way through this minefield of exasperating cases in order to keep everyone from the cannabis lobby to the anti-slave traders happy with his judgements. No hope of a quiet life for Charlie then, but, as ever, he deals with the issues of the day with satirical good humour, insight and wit. Another entertaining and insightful look at the British court system and the long-awaited sole Walden novel.

Born in 1946, Peter Murphy graduated from Cambridge University and pursued a career in the law in England, the United States and The Hague. He practised as a barrister in London for a decade, then took up a professorship at a law school in Texas, a position he held for more than twenty years. Towards the end of that period he returned to Europe as counsel at the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague for almost a decade. In 2007 he returned to England to take up an appointment as a judge of the Crown Court. He retired as Resident Judge and Honorary Recorder of Peterborough in 2015. Peter started writing fiction more than twenty years ago, but following his retirement from the bench he became a full-time author, often drawing on the many experiences of his former career. Two political thrillers about the American presidency: Removal and Test of Resolve were followed by eight legal thrillers in the Ben Schroeder series about a barrister practising in London in the 1960s and 1970s. Alongside those he also penned the light-hearted series of short story collections featuring Judge Walden of Bermondsey in the 'Rumpole' tradition, based in part on his own experiences as a lawyer and judge, and recently published A Statue for Jacob, based on the true story of Jacob de Haven. Peter passed away in July 2022.