DIARY OF A D.A.

A recall of 16 years as prosecutor in the District Attorney's office presents a variety of cases, crimes, legal procedures, courtroom tactics, etc., that were part of Judge Frank's early training in the Bronx. In giving the details of murders, arson, robberies, racketeers, and all the other violations of the law that came to him, he also makes clear the social problems involved, the incongruities of the law, the machinery of arrest and trial, the functions of the D.A.'s office, types of unethical legal practice, and the kinds of sentences and penalties. His concept that a D. A. is not only to prosecute the guilty but also to protect the innocent is a point in several of the cases, and his accounts of the ways in which criminals are tracked down and apprehended underline the fact that crime does not pay. For the true crime followers as well as those whose interest is in criminal law.