Pleading Guilty [Hardcover]

Scott Turow (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: The Franklin Library; First Edition edition (1993)
• ISBN-10: 0002240149
• ISBN-13: 978-0002240147
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,322,271 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

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great legal thriller that also makes you laugh!, January 29, 2000

By 

Brian Reynolds - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pleading Guilty (Mass Market Paperback)

An extremely well crafted legal drama/mystery. Turow has always developed his characters superbly, and his study of narrator Mack Malloy is masterful. Malloy is a deep and believable character, and his personality gives Turow even better opportunities than usual to exercise his wit--how often does a page turner legal thriller also have you rolling with laughter on several occasions? I highly recommend this book, and I second the notion that this is the perfect place to start if you're wondering if Scott Turow is for you.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Turow's bests......Read this one first, July 11, 1999

By 

Kevin Waguespack (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pleading Guilty (Mass Market Paperback)

It's been several years since I've read this book, but I highly recommnend it. After reading a couple of the poor reviews (from the looks of the reviews, you either love it or hate it), I felt I had to throw in my two cents. This book is different than Turow's other loosely-connected trilogy and certainly one of the best. It's written in that first person, detective-type cadence that keeps the pages turning fast. If you're new to Turow, read Presumed Innocent and this one, the others are a notch below.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Turow ranks among the greatest "legal thriller" writers!!, April 27, 2003

By 

RMurray847 "afilmcritic.com" (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Pleading Guilty (Mass Market Paperback)

For some reason, John Grisham continues to be the hugest name in the "legal thriller" business, when that honor ought to be firmly in the grasp of Scott Turow. His books have more "meat on the bone," dabble in moral ambiguity more instead of having such clearly delineated good guys / bad guys, and are written in a more literate style. Grisham's characters are sketched in quickly and seldom grow and change. He's like the lawyer's version of Michael Crichton, all plot and no heart.

By shear coincidence, this was really driven home to me when I first read THE PARTNER, by Grisham, which tells the story of a lawyer who steals a huge amount of money from his shady law partners and disappears with it. It's a fun STORY with many amusing touches, but never makes you truly care for the characters. I followed this read immediately with PLEADING GUILTY, which also dealt with some shady attorneys being ripped off big-time by one of their partners.

The main character is Mack Malloy, an ex-cop turned lawyer, who is grappling with raising on his own a VERY troubled teenage boy and is also a recovering alcoholic right on the edge of no longer recovering. He's a smart attorney but not a terribly productive one for his firm, and he's given the job of tracking down his fellow partner who is suspected of raiding a company settlement fund of millions and disappearing. Mack begins to investigate, and he peels of layer after layer of secrets and surprises...off his firm, off their #1 client, off the local police force and even from his friend, the disappeared lawyer.

Told in the first person, the character of Mack is flawed but totally engaging. And when I say "flawed," I don't mean a little. He's a hard guy to like, but his narrative style is so incisive and his sadness so profound, he gets our sympathy. He (meaning author Turow) is also a very astute observer of character and through his eyes, we get to know a lot of very interesting and varied people. This book really had me turning the pages.

My only gripe is the conclusion. The plot gets twisted enough that when Mack finally gets to "reveal all" it takes a good long time to set us straight on what has happened and why. Turow also assumes that we care more than we do about a couple of the more minor characters in the book, and this slows the ending down a bit too. By no means do these minor flaws make this a book not worth reading though...I was sorry to leave Mack behind.

Turow first came to real national attention with his stellar PRESUMED INNOCENT. But I've read several of his subsequent books, and they are all rock solid. Grisham is like a burger, fast and filling but not all that good for you. Turow, to me, is more like nice, slow steak dinner...satisfying and worth lingering over. Give him a try! ...