Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder (1958)

 It is a measure of how well he succeeded that in this page-turning novel the trial doesn't even begin until halfway through the book.  And it is this digging into the past of the various witnesses, the uncovering of secrets, the finding of evidence that is the anatomy of a murder.  And it is the law that is the true hero of the book.

--John Steele Gordon, "The Middle Ground of Fiction," The New Criterion March 2021

"To prove your insanity.  Insanity, Lieutenant, is a medical question and for us, the defense, to create a legal issue on that score we must present expert testimony that you were insane.  Once that is done, however, the issue is created and then the burder of disproving your insanity falls squarely on the People.  That is our biggest and most pressing problem."

--Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder, St. Martin's Press (1958)

Robert Traver was a pseudonym for John D. Voelker, an attorney in the upper peninsula of Michigan, where Anatomy of a Murder is set.  The book is a detailed look at a murder trial, narrated in the first person by defense attorney Paul Biegler, and crammed with detail about the trial, the law and life in that somewhat sparsely populated area of the state.  We often get to hear what Biegler is thinking as the prosecution makes its case and even as Biegler presents his defense, trying to counter and outthink the prosecution (it helps that he was a prosecuter himself until he got voted out of office).  A soldier is on trial for shooting the man who raped his wife and with the help of a possibly temporary sober and crusty assistant, Parnell McCarthy, Biegler mounts an insanity defense.  The complex plot is the thing here, though the unmarried and aging Biegler does have the beginning of a relationship with one of the female witnesses.  The book is very much a product of its time, when murder trials were rather short and lawyers were mostly male. their reliable secretaries female, and victims of rape not always taken seriously.  Though the writing is somewhat on the folksy side the legal details and the personalities -- from the judge and the lawyers to the law enforcement officials and the jurors -- are effectively portrayed.