Personal Injuries (Scott Turow) [Hardcover]

Scott Turow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 1999

A gripping, suspenseful, deeply satisfying new novel about corruption, deceit, and love.

Robbie Feaver (pronounced "favor") is a charismatic personal injury lawyer with a high profile practice, a way with the ladies, and a beautiful wife (whom he loves), who is dying of an irreversible illness. He also has a secret bank account where he occasionally deposits funds that make their way into the pockets of the judges who decide Robbie's cases.

Robbie is caught by the Feds, and, in exchange for leniency, agrees to "wear a wire" as he continues to try to fix decisions. The FBI agent assigned to supervise him goes by the alias of Evon Miller. She is lonely, uncomfortable in her skin, and impervious to Robbie's charms. And she carries secrets of her own.

As the law tightens its net, Robbie's and Evon's stories converge thrillingly. Scott Turow takes us into, the world of greed and human failing he has made immortal in Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty, and The Laws of Our Fathers, all published by FSG. He also shows us enduring love and quiet, unexpected heroism. Personal Injuries is Turow's most reverberant, most moving novel-a powerful drama of individuals trying to escape their characters.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Scott Turow has always pushed himself beyond the expectations of readers and critics. In Presumed Innocent (1987), he introduced fictional Kindle County and ushered in the era that spawned such mega-authors as John Grisham, Richard North Patterson, and David Baldacci. In Personal Injuries, Turow continues to innovate on legal fiction, but his achievement this time is not gained through clever plot twists (though there are several) or intense legal action (though there is much of that too). The achievement of mastery this time is via exquisitely drawn, Faulknerian characters--attorney Robbie Feaver, agent Evon Miller, U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett, and Justice Brendan Tuohey--whose lives become the driving mystery at the core of the book.

The novel begins with Robbie Feaver seeking counsel from the narrator, attorney George Mason. For years, Feaver has been bribing several judges in the Common Law Claims Division to win favorable judgments. Now that U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett has uncovered Feaver's dirty little secret, he wants to use Feaver to get at the man he believes to be at the center of all the legal corruption in the metropolitan area, Brendan Tuohey, Presiding Judge of Common Law Claims and heir apparent to the Chief Justice of Kindle County Superior Court. With Mason as an advisor, Robbie assists Sennett and his team of FBI undercover agents in crafting a massive sting operation that involves an FBI-manufactured lawyer named "James McManis," a cast of fictional clients, and "Evon Miller"--a deep cover agent (and former Olympic athlete)--who poses as Robbie's paralegal and paramour.

With a skill rarely found in genre fiction, Turow composes his narrative with variations on several recurring themes. The novel ripples with paranoia as the FBI enshrouds the legal community of Kindle County in a web of tapped phones, concealed cameras, and wired spies.

At the center of indirection sit Robbie and Evon. The pair dance through an elegant game of erotically-charged hide and seek: Robbie the practiced liar and former actor, and Evon, the agent whose whole life must remain a fiction if she is to survive. At their best, legal thrillers leave readers confronting the core of their values and perceptions of legal and moral rectitude. Personal Injuries is the legal thriller at its very best. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

Unlike most of his fellow lawyer-novelists, Turow has always been more interested in character than plot, and in Robbie Feaver, a lawyer on the make who ends up fighting for his life, he has created his richest and most compelling figure yet. For years, Robbie has been paying off judges and squirreling away part of the riches he earns as a highly successful trial lawyer. When the IRS happens upon the money trail, and a top prosecutor leans on him to turn state's evidence and finger some of the corrupt justices, Robbie calls on George Mason, veteran Kindle County lawyer, to represent him and win the best deal he can. A complicating element in the case is Evon Miller, Mormon-born FBI agent in deep undercover, who is assigned to watch Feaver and finds herself, against her better inclinations, drawn to himAfor Feaver is a character of almost Shakespearean contradictions. A charming, brash womanizer who nevertheless shows superhuman reserves of love and patience to his dying wife at home, he is always several jumps ahead of the prosecutors, the FBI and the reader, winning sympathy, even admiration, where there should be none. This patient account is fascinatingly detailed in the ways of the law and the justice system, of how Robbie zeroes in on the biggest target of all, only to be trumped at the last moment. It is also a deeply understanding look, in its portrait of Evon, of the motives that drive a solitary woman into police work (Thomas Harris's Clarice seems shallow by comparison). There are some remarkable narrative strategiesATurow deftly alternates a first-person and omniscient-author point of view, for exampleAbut readers will not be concerned with technical details, only with the rare revelation of a paradoxical personality so compelling he makes the very adroit plot almost superfluous. 750,000 first printing; $500,000 ad/promo; first serial to Playboy; BOMC main selection; QPB selection; 9-city author tour; paperback rights to Warner; simultaneous Random House audio. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st trade ed edition (September 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281947
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281946
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (233 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,530 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

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, compelling, moving - Turow is a master, November 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Personal Injuries (Scott Turow) (Hardcover)

Scott Turow does not write John Grisham novels. Many of us who read Turow read him because he doesn't churn out the the lowbrow, predictable pablum of other popular genre writers. Personal Injuries is magnificent - filled with complex, multi-faceted characters who are never entirely good or evil but, like most of us, somewhere in-between. The character of Robbie Feaver kept surprising me and challenging my initial perceptions (kinda like some of the people in my own life, how 'bout that!). I found the plot involving corrupt judges to be absolutely compelling and helped immeasurably by Turow's obvious experience with similar circumstances. I finished the novel last night and couldn't help but weep while reading the final 20 pages. Not only did I find the conclusion moving but the novel and the challenges of its characters left me with questions about my own life to think about. Now, what more could I ask of a piece of fiction?

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful read, February 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Personal Injuries (Scott Turow) (Hardcover)

It is amazing how many people missed the boat on this one. The very first review says it all. "Personal Injuries" isn't about plot or story line or fast pace or excitement or courtroom drama.

As I read the book I kept waiting for something to happen until I realized that something was happening. I was watching an author create a cast of characters who peopled any room I read this book in. Exquisitely drawn and beautifully built as seen through the eyes of not the first person narrator but the main character Robbie Feaver (pronounced "favor" as he tells us).

Further, Turow's portrayal of ALS and its effect on family members as well as the victim is heartbreaking. Such sadness!

Turow also leads us into the dark world of witness protection, the FBI and the battle of jurisdiction, political ambition and political medelling, etc.

Well done, Mr. Turow. Some of us understood where you were going and what you were doing.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A legal thriller based in reality, May 28, 2000

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Personal Injuries (Scott Turow) (Hardcover)

Do you like legal thrillers, but are you somehow haunted by the belief that John Grisham doesn't really know what it's like to be a lawyer? Are you a patient reader? If the answer is yes to both questions, then this book is for you. The book, which involves a federal investigation into a corrupt judiciary scheme takes place in Turow's fictional Kindle County. We meet Robbie Feaver as he is coerced into cooperating with the investigation. The book takes off slowly and at the beginning, I confess I really did not like the book all that much. It was a little dry and sometimes had the look and feel of a legal memo (which are not that exciting, and if you've never read one, trust me on this). There was something that kept me reading and I am glad I did. I think it may have simply been the fact that the characters and what they do are truly realistic. As the book continues, Turow throws in some interesting, and yet still believable plot twists. His characters, at least the main ones are fairly multidimensional and the world they live in not all black and white, good and evil, but shades of grey. Robbie is not the most likable character, but is ultimately sympathetic. His choices, like those of the other characters, were not always good ones, but he is human. All in all this is an enjoyable novel if you have the patience to stick throught the first 100 pages or so.