Customer Reviews

Presumed Innocent

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I still pick up my battered paperback copy of "Presumed Innocent" from time to time and reread my favorite scenes, which probably speaks to the worth of Scott Turow's novel as much as anything. But ultimately I think the strength of this novel is that it works well on both parts of the law & order equation, that is to say, both in the courtroom in terms of the legal drama as well as outside where the detective elements come into play. At heart "Presumed Innocent" is a basic horror story, about a man who may be convicted for a crime he did not do. However, the twist here is that we are not sure if we believe our narrator, Rusty Sabich, once the fair-haired chief deputy prosecutor in the Kindle County D.A.'s office.

Rusty Sabich's boss, Raymond Horgan, is in a dogfight for the election with Nico Della Guardia, a former lieutenant. When one of their colleagues, Carolyn Polhemus, is found brutally murdered, Horgan gives Sabich the job. What Horgan does not know is that Sabich and Polhemus had been involved in an affair, which ended badly. Only Sabich's wife, Barbara, knows about the affair, and she has as much trouble dealing with her husband's obsession over the dead woman as she did with the affair. Sabich begins the investigation but there are no suspects, no leads, and no hope of finding the killer. But when Horgan loses the election, Sabich is stunned to find himself the new administrations one and only suspect for the Polhemus murder.

The fact that Sabich was a prosecutor becomes a key part of the legal dilemma in which our narrator finds himself. On the one hand he can piece together the prosecution's case based, but on the other hand Sabich is well aware of how what he does in defending himself can add to his legal problems, especially since without proof of the affair the prosecution is lacking a motive to tie the circumstantial evidence together. This last bit is crucial to the novel's dynamic because we have our own reasonable doubt about Sabich's innocent. Even if we do not know that Agatha Christie had a first-person narrator be the murderer in one of her classic mystery novels, we have to entertain doubts about Sabich: his finger print is found on a glass in the apartment, there was a phone call from his house to Polhemus that night, etc. Sabich has reasonable explanations, but there are too many of them for us not to think that something is wrong here.

Sabich, along with his friend Detective Lipranzer, is pursuing some ideas as to who would want to murder Polhemus and frame him for the crime. But in the courtroom it is defense attorney Sandy Stern who carries the legal burden of Sabich's defense; provided he can get his client to stop acting like an attorney during the trial. But then the presiding judge, Larren Lyttle, is perfectly willing to give Sabich every courtesy. Lyttle is a defendant's judge, who is most insistent that jurors in his courtroom presume the innocence of defendants. That is the good news. The bad news is that Sabich learns Lyttle might be deeply involved in his alternative theory of the case. In other words, the judge is a potential loose cannon.

For me the strength of "Presumed Innocent" remains what happens in the courtroom. Stern's cross-examination of the coroner, "Painless" Kumagai is a wonderful set piece. It is the sort of scene that makes you realize how few novels set in courtroom ever manage to come up with really first-rate scenes. But what makes this novel so compelling is how well it keeps us guessing as to not only whether or not Sabich did the murder, but also whether or not he will be convicted of the crime. Even when one of those questions is resolved, the other remains unresolved until the final chapters of the book.

Scott Turow has not written a novel as good as "Presumed Innocent," and it seems unlikely he ever will. This is not because of his lack of talent (certainly he has not flooded the market with his novels unlike Grisham), but simply because he may have committed the unpardonable sin of writing his greatest book first (as Richard Adams did with "Watership Down"). I could live with such a curse.

I just read a review on this site that made me wonder if that reviewer and I had read the same book. Her obvious disappointment with the characters and plot was sad to read. "Presumed Innocent" was a fascinating read I thought. Rusty Sabich is accused of murdering his colleague and, unbeknownst to his accusers, his ex-lover. He tells his own story, and if Scott Turow is a lawyer first, his career as a writer must follow a very close second. First person narrators are barely to be believed if they are telling their own stories. The fragmented technique used by Turow to tell Rusty's story has two vital uses. First, it reflects the state of his mind: he narrates in vivid flashback and in first person present. Rusty is a fragmented man himself. He is emotionally fragile and is being pounded on by elements he feels he cannot control. Rusty believes that he was in love with the dead woman and for the kind of man that he unfolds into being, this is not at all difficult to accept. He makes himself out to be quite dispassionate, but all his actions reveal that he is very passionate and needs to be around people who are as well. Watch out for storytellers who are promising to be objective and truthful. They rarely ever are and more lie in what they say about situations and others than in what they say about themselves directly. Also, this is a wonderful technique to leave the reader wanting more. Turow does not protect his reader from harsh realities in the world of a prosecuting attorney: rape, murder and violent acts. The seemingly large number of characters do not detract from Rusty's story, as they all have their roles to play in the telling. Fragmented narrators seem to feel the need to describe a lot of people around them so as to deflect attention away from themselves and this happens here too. Yet, Turow manages to make all his characters interesting and colourful: Rusty's emtionally distant wife, his politricking boss, his sauve defence lawyer, the larger-than-life judge, the sexy, know-what-she-wants-and-how-to-get-it ex-lover. They all have their stories and very dark sides. Turow may be a "real" writer, but he is not an insensitive one. Barbara Sabich may not be very likeable, but her love for her son is without question, as is Rusty's gentle and intense devotion to their child. The strange kinship between Rusty and his best friend, Dan Lipranzer, is sweet, without being cloying, and it makes you hope to have a friend like that. Turow allows the story to unfold easily and naturally, not hurrying to let things happen, so he keeps the reader in suspense. The investigation into the murder reveals more about others than it does about the accused and when characters begin to become worried about exposure, the book picks up. Flashbacks into Rusty's early career are raw and not for those with a weak stomach. The trial scenes are clear and there is one scene where Rusty's lawyer goes after a pathologist that makes you want to cheer. The film, although sound, didn't do justice the novel and should be read, if just to fill in the blanks. the ending is truly a suprise for a first reader, and not just discovering whodunnit. Turow's novel flows easily, keeps the reader interested and is definately unputdownable.

I just finished this book last night, at 2:30 am, less than four hours before I have to get up to go to work. It's that good. It took me two days to read the first third, and one day to read that last two-thirds....I could not put this book down. At the end, I felt like, I should have guessed who the murderer was, but I never had a clue. I even had to re-read the pages over again to make sure that what I was reading was real. Amazing how I, in the end, felt sadness for people I had loathed the whole time and then felt compulsions for people I originally felt sorry for. Nothing is as it seems and everyone is suspect. There were times when I actually laughed out loud at something a character said, and then felt like crying over some other scene. The words and characters just lept from the page.

It pains me to hear everyone say that this is the best of this kind, since I am just now returning to reading mysteries after years of "not having enough time." I want more! Please tell me that there are other books this exciting out there, because anything less will be too disappointing!

This book grabbed my attention from the first moment and held on to it until the end. Instead of being a predictable legal thriller, like some others I have read, this great murder mystery/legal thriller has plenty of twists and turns through its thick and nuanced plot. The story is set in Kindle County and is about Rusty Sabich, a man who seems set for life: he has a lovely wife and son, a job in the Prosecuting Attorney's Office at which he excels, and a strong friendship with Detective Lipranzer of the KCPD. After a fellow PA is killed and Rusty is implicated, he must stake everything he holds dear to prove his innocence. After he is found not guilty, the book really gets interesting and it just can not be put down. The ending, though is ambiguous and is open to the interpretation of the reader, testing how well they think they know the characters. I enjoyed this book very much and I think that Turow is a better writer than John Grisham, although the books of the latter always absorb me because of their excellent plots. I would recommend this book to anybody.

. . .it's obvious he still can't get Carolyn out of his mind, even though she's now dead and he's the prime suspect in her murder. But as the murder trial begins, more secrets, motives, and pain surface; each one makes you wonder anew: did he or didn't he? We see the ripples all this makes in Rusty's career (ironically, he's a prosecuting lawyer) and his marriage to a math professor who is as brilliant a scholar as Carolyn was a lawyer. When the murder was solved, though, I found myself wondering: did it happen the way a character said it did, or was it how a defense attorney would spin it out to get a client acquitted?

Since others have mentioned the movie here, I will too. When I first read this book, I pictured Ellen Barkin as Carolyn. She has sizzled on-screen in everything she's ever played. The producers blew it by not getting her. Every other part was perfectly cast. They needed a hot mama, not a cool kitten, to make the character believable. Oh, well. This book was easy to pick up and hard to put down, as they used to say. Enjoy. . .

Scott Turow takes on two of fiction writing's most difficult tasks in Presumed Innocent--and succeeds marvelously! One is to write in first person narrative. This is an overused technique, usually employed by rookies, that makes more sense in literary novels than this type. It certainly makes telling a complex story such as this more difficult because of the limitations in how information can be passed to the reader. The biggest problem is in making the writing readable. Without great talent, first person narratives quickly become bogged down with repetitive "I did this ... but then I saw that... and then I went there." Turow makes this narrative invisible, allowing the crucial "suspension of disbelief."

His second accomplishment is to write a book with a truly surprise ending. You will not see it coming, and you will be amazed. His understanding of the legal process, of which he writes, is obvious. His characters are interesting and very three dimensional. The movie is good too, but read the story first. My hat is off to Turow. He is a professional writer of the first order, and Presumed Innocent is one the best works in the genre. When I grow up, I want to write just like Scott Turow. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

4 1/2 stars.

Raymond Hogan is running for re-election to the Kindle County Prosecutor's office. He is challenged by Nico Della Guardia, who is winning the race.

Rusty Sabich is Hogan's deputy prosecutor and the narrator of the story. When Carolyn Polhemus, a prosecutor on their staff, is found raped and murdered, Hogan asks Rusty to run the investigation. The investigation goes slowly. Nico uses the slowness and the fact that the Prosecutor can't find a murderer of someone who worked with him, to gain more popularity in the polls.

Rusty conveys how cold and uncaring his wife, Barbara, had become. Not only avoiding him, when Barbara found that Rusty was going to run the investigation into Carolyn's death, she had known that Rusty had been seeing Carolyn and Barbara asks Rusty to move out of the house.

In the first segment of the novel, we follow Rusty's involvement with Carolyn and how she became the aggressor in the relationship but then suddenly ended their affair. When she avoids Rusty but then starts seeing Hogan, Rusty becmes withdrawn. Later, when Rusty is investigating the case, Hogan admits that he was also sleeping with Carolyn. The political race goes badly for Hogan, partly due to the slow moving investigation.

This section ends with a very cinimatic and suspenseful scene in Raymond Hogan's office. Hogan conveys that he will be leaving his office almost immediately and then an arrogant Tommy Motto, who is Nico's second in command, tells Rusty that they will be inditing him and he, Motto, has evidence that Rusty was in Carolyn's home on the night of her murder.

The next part of the novel depicts the court case. Sandy Stern is a masterful defense attorney for Rusty and he becomes a father figure and like an old, knowledgable professor. Rusty is also helped by Dan Lipanzer, a police investigator, who had been his friend for years.

Other than that, Rusty's old friends shun him. When Hogan becomes a witness against Rusty, it is almost as if Rusty's oldest friend has betrayed him.

There are courtroom scenes that will linger in the reader's memory for a long time. The characters were well depicted and the pacing just right. I did feel that a seventy page segment after the trial when we learn of what happened to Rusty and Barbara and other characters was too long and this was the only factor that made my rating less than five stars.

Overall, this was an enjoyable and highly entertaining novel.

Here's an absolutely superb book; one of the best mysteries I've ever read.

A deputy prosecuting attorney (district attorney) has his hands full while his boss is running for reelection. As this is happening, one of his fellow prosecutors is murdered and apparently raped. It turns out the two had had an affair in the not too distant past. There are clues to the murder, but which are red herrings? There are others involved in the investigation, but do any have an axe to grind? Hints of relationships and past activities swirl around like tendrils of fog in a dying breeze. Whodunit . . . and why?

Overall it's a corking good read without any flaws or holes. But it's more than that; it's an oddly disturbing story. I can take a Grisham or Kellerman book, and sit comfortably absorbed into the wee hours enjoying the ride. But Turow gets under your skin and makes you fidgety. You want to put the book down, but you're compelled to keep reading. You can't comfortably categorize good guys and bad guys, things here are all constantly shifting shades of gray. Is the main character a victim or a diabolical killer? Was the victim an innocent, or did she precipitate her own doom? Keep squirming and turning pages as you throw out assumptions and reassess the evidence. You won't be sorry!

While PRESUMED INNOCENT might be most commonly categorized as a legal thriller, one could definitely make a case for calling it a psychological thriller. In much the same fashion as the appeal of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch canon starts with the noir angst-ridden psychological under-pinnings of his main characters, Scott Turow narrates much of his story via the thoughts of Rusty Sabich, the former deputy prosecutor of the Kindle County DA's office.

The basic plot premise is exciting! Raymond Horgan, Sabich's boss and incumbent in the Kindle County prosecutor's position is squared off against Nico Della Guardia in the upcoming election. When Carolyn Polhemus, one of Sabich's colleagues in the office is found murdered, Horgan assigns the job to Sabich. But when Horgan loses the election, Della Guardia discovers that Sabich and Polhemus once had an affair. The magnifying glass of the investigation is focused onto Sabich and he is horrified to discover that he is now the sole suspect for the murder.

We feel like Sabich isn't the murder. Indeed, we very much want to belive that Sabich isn't the murder. But the beauty of the suspense in this novel is that we are never sure about the culprit and the true motives for the murder until the final few pages.

Lots of superb legal drama with lots of colour and detail presented from both sides of a number of different fences - prosecution vs defense; police and investigation vs judiciary; victim vs villain; and husband vs wife, to name only a few.

If you're looking for action in this one, you're bound to be disappointed. This is a thinking man's thriller, a cerebral novel that is plot and character driven. As another reviewer once noted, it's a shame that very little that Scott Turow has written since has measured up to the very high bar that he set for himself with this debut novel.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

An attorney friend of mine recommended this book as the most accurate portrayal of courtroom drama and true legal arguments in fiction. For him most other trial fiction (Grisham, in particular) is staged b.s. So, I picked this book up to give it a go and I wasn't disappointed.

With the plot summary already detailed above on the main Amazon page, I'm just going to dive into what really worked for me. It was the untrustworthy narrator. I felt disconcerted throughout the book because I couldn't tell whether the narrator, the protagonist Rusty Sabich, was an advocate for the reader by telling the truth, or whether he was carefully constructing his own version of the events in an elaborate lie that would only unravel near the end. It's a technique reminiscent of Philip K Dick's masterful narrative manipulations in science fiction, but this is the best use of that technique I can remember reading in modern mainstream literature.

The courtroom arguments were also compelling. Turow's knowledge of the law as a former U.S. Prosecutor comes through brilliantly in both those courtroom sequences and in the political intrigue always flowing behind the scenes, causing tension and making everyone's life a permanent roller coaster ride of insecurity.

This book hooked me like the movie never could. I recommend it highly.

- CV Rick