The Laws of our Fathers [Hardcover]

Scott Turow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 1996

A drive-by shooting of an aging white woman at a gang-plagued Kindle County housing project sets in motion Scott Turow's intensely absorbing novel. With its riveting suspense and idelibly drawn characters, The Laws of our Fathers shows why Turow is not only the master of the modern legal thriller but also one of America's most engaging and satisfying novelists.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At the close of legal-thriller novelist Scott Turow's second book, The Burden of Proof, Sonia Klonsky was a young prosecutor in Kindle County Courthouse with a failing marriage, an infant daughter, and a single mastectomy. Now, as the narrator of Turow's latest novel, she's a Superior Court Judge presiding over the murder trial of one Nile Eddgar, accused of arranging the slaying of his ghetto-activist mother, June. Turow attempts a sort of social history of the 60s in this ambitious mystery, but the most vivid passages come when the gangbangers of the Black Saints Disciples take center stage. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Turow once again proves that there is more substance in a single page of one of his novels than in the entire works of John Grisham or any other author in the legal thriller genre. In this latest, the mother of a probation officer is shot near a gang-infested housing project, provoking charges that her son orchestrated the killing. The ensuing trial reunites a group of affluent Sixties activists who knew each other in their student days. The courtroom scenes are energetic and intelligent, and Turow never resorts to playing good guys vs. bad guys. Nor does he subject his characters to tearful, revelatory testimony while on the stand. His dialog is snappy and believable?aside from some awkwardly rendered sections featuring the leader of an urban street gang?and his insight into his characters' petty motivations and misplaced love is dead on. All public libraries should have a copy of this fine novel.?Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 534 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 18, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374184232
• ISBN-13: 978-0374184230
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,464,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Turow was born in Chicago in 1949. He graduated with high honors from Amherst College in 1970, receiving a fellowship to Stanford University Creative Writing Center which he attended from 1970 to 1972. From 1972 to 1975 Turow taught creative writing at Stanford. In 1975, he entered Harvard Law School, graduating with honors in 1978. From 1978 to 1986, he was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, serving as lead prosecutor in several high-visibility federal trials investigating corruption in the Illinois judiciary. In 1995, in a major pro bono legal effort he won a reversal in the murder conviction of a man who had spent 11 years in prison, many of them on death row, for a crime another man confessed to.

Today, he is a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal an international law firm, where his practice centers on white-collar criminal litigation and involves representation of individuals and companies in all phases of criminal matters. Turow lives outside Chicago

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some parts gripping, some parts off-putting, January 24, 2000

By 

Brian Reynolds - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Laws of Our Fathers (Mass Market Paperback)

There is a great 600 page thriller hiding inside the 800 pages of The Laws of Our Fathers. Specifically, I'd suggest losing the last 100 pages and most of the first 100. The central account of the trial is powerful and gripping, and the flashbacks to the sixties are well done as well. The characters, as is usual with Turow, are deep and interesting. But there are LONG detours into what I found to be excessive tangential and background material. This happens on and off throughout, but most of this is concentrated into the last 100 pages of the book, by which time you've already had the climax wrap-up of not one but -both- main plot lines, and you're thinking "and now why do I have to go through ANOTHER 100 pages?" No good reason presents itself (from a thriller reader's point of view) just a lot of wallowing around in characters' minds. I have no argument with those who say Turow (or probably more accurately, this book) "isn't for everyone", or that the book has touches of "literature" as opposed to simply mystery/thriller (One of the editorial review clips called Turow the "thinking man's John Grisham" which gave me a chuckle). But first of all I'd take exception with the view that the "literary" elements were exceptionally well executed, because they do have a tendency to bring an otherwise gripping plot to a grinding halt. And secondly I think it's fair to warn readers looking for a mystery/thriller (even a deep complex one) that it will take 100 pages or so before you start getting what you paid for. I enjoyed this book, but you should go into it with eyes open.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Less than Presumed Innocent, but better than Grisham., May 26, 1998

By 

A H - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Laws of our Fathers (Hardcover)

Yes, this book is complicated and long. But for those with a keen literary eye, it delivers. I've been so disappointed with recent John Grisham novels that I found the weightiness and substantive content of this Turow novel very satisfying.

I would agree with those who say that this book transcends the genre. This is no mere courtroom drama or legal thriller. It's really several novels in one; the flashback sequences to the 60s could even stand on their own. As a post-60s Gen Xer, I was intrigued with the seemingly eyewitness account of what life was really like back then.

It is possibly true that this book may be a bit long. Yet I was so impressed with Turow's narrative voice and the authenticity of such a diverse cast of characters that it held my interest. A good deal of thought and research went into this one, and it really warrants a more thoughtful read than your average formulaic legal drama. Two thumbs up.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Literary Quicksand, July 26, 2003

By 

Michael Hall "mtbikermike" (Olympia, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Laws of Our Fathers (Mass Market Paperback)

Reading this book was like pulling teeth. What I love about Turow is the character development he brings to his books, tightly woven with tight, sharp legal thrills. Grisham's best is a comic book next to Turow's worst. Quite simply, Turow treats his readers like adults, while Grisham treats his like ignorant children.

BUT: In "The Laws of Our Fathers" Turow has gotten carried away. I can only surmise that he awoke one day and decided to write the Great American Legal Novel, as Laws of Our Fathers reads like a combination of Hermann Melville and Saul Bellow. The issues covered -- race and war in the 1960s; religion, separation, parenting, and isolation in the 1990s, are all sigificant and all worthy of a novel. What they are not worthy of is being combined into a single "mass market" novel. The plot simply collapses beneath the weight of the Important Social Matters about which Turow writes.

As I say, Turow writes for the thinking person and one expects to be challenged when one buys his work. But in Laws of Our Father the endless pages of 75-line paragraphs made me time and time again put the book aside. There needs to be a periodic tease that makes the reader want to continue, and in Laws of Our Fathers they were too far apart by scores of pages.

Fortunately Turow returns to form in Reversible Errors, so one can hope that Laws of Our Fathers is an anomaly.