Last of the Old Guard (2008)

Adrian Suydam, the genteel elderly narrator of this graceful period piece, looks back over his life and struggles to understand his longtime friend and law partner, the famously ruthless Ernest Saunders. Uninterested in sex, virtually incapable of love, and lacking a moral compass, Saunders built a powerful early-20th-century Manhattan law firm — but to what end? The private papers he leaves behind at his death only complicate matters for Suydam. Though Louis Auchincloss, a lawyer himself, breaks no new ground in Last of the Old Guard, his 66th book, his portrait of the old WASP power elite is, as ever, psychologically astute and smartly written. B+