Robert Traver's 'Anatomy of a Murder' was one of the early courtroom thrillers that John Grisham would make so popular thirty plus years later. Like his fictional character Paul Biegler, John D. Voekler--Traver's real name--had been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, and was intimately familiar with the twists and turns of criminal cases in small-town courts. The book was based on a case that Biegler actually defended and his delight in the law (and fishing) comes through. Traver set a difficult task for himself, in that the the story of the crime at the center of the book has been told in the first 100 pages; the next 400+ are all about making the case that will save his client's life, yet the writing is still compelling. The supporting characters--investigator Parnell McCarthy, secretary Maida, and prosecutor Claude Dancer--are vivid, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula is almost like another character. Spoiler alert: the book is quite different than the movie, but Jimmy Stewart will always be "Polly" Biegler to me.