Books: Courtroom Drama

THE TRIAL OF DOCTOR ADAMS (245 pp.)—Sybille Bedford—Simon & Schuster ($3.75).

Nobody stages better murder trials than the British, or writes about them with a more intriguing combination of solemnity and excitement. The 1957 murder trial of Dr. John Bodkin Adams, the longest (17 days) in recent English history, was easily one of the outstanding legal dramas ever to be seen at London's Old Bailey. Its major appeal did not rest on sex, money or gore; it came from the encounter between law and medicine, two intricate, big, imprecise and sometimes deadly disciplines....

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