Limitations [Paperback]

Scott Turow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2006

 

A Picador Paperback Original
 
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent comes a compelling new legal mystery featuring George Mason from Personal Injuries. Originally commissioned and published by The New York Times Magazine, this edition contains additional material.
 
Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason. His days as a criminal defense lawyer are long behind him. At fifty-nine, he has sat as a judge on the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet, when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. What is troubling George Mason so deeply? Is it his wife's recent diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening e-mails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific case of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge?
 
In Limitations, Scott Turow, the master of the legal thriller, returns to Kindle County with a page-turning entertainment that asks the biggest questions of all. Ingeniously, and with great economy of style, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law but of human understanding itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest offering from legal thriller master Turow began life as a serial story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine and won't be mistaken, even by devoted fans, for his finest work. As with his previous novels, the action centers on the fictional Kindle County in Illinois, and he revives some familiar characters, including George Mason from Personal Injuries and Rusty Sabich, the hero of his acclaimed fiction debut, Presumed Innocent. Mason is now an appellate judge, faced with the challenge of crafting the decision in a high-profile case involving a sexual assault that reawakens his long-suppressed guilt over his role in a similar incident decades before. To compound his inner turmoil, Mason finds himself the object of threatening e-mails from an unknown source. While Turow's writing is assured as ever, the plot and the legal dilemmas interwoven into it aren't up to his usual high standards, and whodunit fans who loved the brilliant twist that highlighted his debut are likely to be disappointed by the mystery's resolution. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This slim volume appeared in the New York Times as a magazine serial in 2006. Although some new material has been added, it still lacks the heft and depth of a full-fledged Turow novel. Even as a novella, it's top-heavy with legal procedure and courtroom scheduling minutiae that would better fit the scope and pacing of a much longer work. However, even Turow Lite delivers a fairly good read. Former criminal defense attorney George Mason (readers will recognize him, as well as the Kindle County setting, from Personal Injuries, 1999) has been comfortably ensconced for almost a decade as a judge on the Court of Appeals. But a case is resurrected that disturbs him in ways that are both perfectly explicable and unfathomable to him. In 1999, four high-school ice-hockey players, all white, videotaped their gang rape of a drugged 15-year-old black girl at a party. The videotape didn't come to light until 2003; a conviction followed, which is now under appeal. The case is horrific in itself; it becomes more frightening to Mason as long-buried shards from his past start troubling him. Add to this a psychotic who keeps threatening him and the fact that his wife has been diagnosed with cancer, and you have one very fragile judge. An intriguing premise, buried under legal procedure that seems tacked on. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 197 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (November 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312426453
• ISBN-13: 978-0312426453
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #697,324 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

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Principle always comes with certain risks.", November 23, 2006

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Limitations (Paperback)

Scott Turow's "Limitations" is the story of George Mason, a fifty-nine year old former criminal defense attorney who is now an appellate court judge. The case currently keeping him up at night is "People vs. Jacob Warnovits." Four white men, now in their middle twenties, were convicted of criminal sexual assault for depraved acts that they committed back in high school. The victim was fifteen-year-old Mindy DeBoyer, an African American girl who passed out after a night of heavy drinking at a party; Jacob Warnovits assaulted Mindy while she was unconscious, and he subsequently videotaped his buddies raping her. Warnovits kept the tape and later showed it to his fraternity brothers in college. Someone tipped off the authorities, and the young men were arrested, tried, convicted, and given the mandatory minimum sentence of six years. They remain free on bond pending the results of their appeal.

Judge Mason and his colleagues must decide whether to affirm or reverse the lower court's ruling. Possible arguments for reversal are that the three-year statute of limitations passed before the case came to trial, and that the videotape, which was illegally shot and prejudicial in nature, should not have been admitted into evidence in the first place. Mason is perturbed, not only because the law is unclear, but also because he himself had been guilty of a sexual indiscretion back in college. He fears that his personal history may taint his ability to act impartially.

Mason has other worries, as well. His devoted wife, Patrice, is being treated for thyroid cancer, and an anonymous individual has been sending him a series of threatening messages. There is speculation that Jaime Colon, the sadistic leader of an infamous street gang, may be out to take revenge on the man who upheld his conviction and sent him to prison.

Turow's cast of characters is varied and lively. They include Judge Nathan Koll, a brilliant megalomaniac who is as paranoid as he is ambitious, Cassandra Oakey, an aggressive law clerk who refuses to defer to her superiors, and Mason himself, who sometimes wonders whether anyone is capable of judging others fairly. "Limitations" refers not just to legal statues but also to the frailties and imperfections that are part of being human. In spite of his occasional self-doubt, Mason believes in the power of the law to mete out justice and impose a semblance of order on an often hate-filled and chaotic society.

Turow lucidly explores the complex issues raised in the emotionally charged Warnovits case. He puts the reader on the bench along with Mason and his colleagues; we get to decide what we believe the ultimate fate of the defendants should be. The book's sole flaw is the jarring and unnecessary story line about Mason's stalker. Not only is this plot element poorly integrated with the rest of the narrative, but its resolution is implausible and unsatisfying. This quibble notwithstanding, "Limitations" is an entertaining, fast-paced, and thought-provoking legal thriller.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, October 21, 2007

By 

D. Noble "TheHKHousewife" (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Limitations (Paperback)

I am new to Turow, having read "Ordinary Heroes" just recently. I liked "Heroes" and was in need of a book for a long flight so I picked up "Limitations." I was really disappointed. I completely agree with the reviewer who commented on the lack of suspense. This was a book with a few loosely pulled together subplots: the threatening emails/text messages, the ailing wife, the current court case and the past incident from college might have worked in a different context, but they didn't really build on one another here. I am usually easy to please, but this book was uninspiring and lackluster.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is what a good novel should be, January 27, 2007

By 

Thelma C. Johnson "[e-mail]" (Cookeville, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Limitations (Paperback)

This novel, right at 200 pages, is short by today's standards. However, Turow has found the right length to tell his story and spared us the padding that one frequently finds in longer works. It is terse, well written, and gives us a deeper perception of the lives of lawyers and judges than we usually get. It deals with guilt, sin, punishment, and justice. Atonement is not discussed, but that is what this is about. The characters are human and real. The legalese and argot of the courts lend an authentic flavor. This is not a book for those who don't like to think.