DNF at chapter 5. The writing style is definitely not for me (dull, blunt), I tried 3 times and I was on the verge of sleeping each time. Also, I thought it was stupidly crass. Good thing I only paid like $.05 for it!

This is a great book. I loved the tone of voice, the characters and the ending is a real shocker. The only reason I could not give this a 5 is the beginning. Another person who reviewed this said the same thing. Since this book starts out with the murder already committed there is an intricate history that must be told about the players in the book. And there are so many players in this book they could field both sides of a football game. I normally don't like books with that many players because my small brain gets them confused but this book did need all of these people in the end. So back to the beginning this book does not get really moving until after about 150 pages. But for me once it did I could not put it down. There is so much more going on than just the murder that is the focus of this book.


This is my first by this author but not my last.

Protagonist (and narrator) Rusty Sabich is the Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Kindle County. When his fingerprints are found at the scene of a crime, he finds himself accused of murder. The bulk of the story is a courtroom drama about Sabich’s trial. There are several additional simultaneous plotlines involving a political campaign, Rusty’s family life, and a past case involving bribery.

The courtroom scenes are the heart of the novel, and the author definitely has a knack for keeping the curiosity level high. One of the highlights of the book is the characterization of defense attorney Alejandro Stern – he is such a great character, and I enjoyed his scenes more than any of the main players. The relationship between Rusty and his seven-year-old son is also beautifully portrayed. It occasionally feels a bit long, with subplots going into way too much graphic detail for my taste, especially descriptions of violent crimes unrelated to the murder.

Published in 1987, it is a little dated and the female victim is a standard stereotype. It is set in a time prior to widespread admissibility of DNA evidence. I was a little disappointed in the resolution (I found it rather far-fetched), but the last half is definitely a page-turner.

Finally done this god forsaken book. Show was much better, no need to put your self through reading this unnecessarily lengthy book. Dragging

Well, here we go. Not a book I hate but a book that I couldn't get into. I would ordinarily go with 2 stars on a "I don't love and I don't hate it' book but for a couple of reasons I lift this one to 3. First the book did interest me at first and the author's writing is good. The 'voice" of the story telling character was at least at first interesting. Secondly there was a problem that might not effect other readers.

Now what didn't I care for...what killed my interest? I think there were a couple of problems for me here. First there are parts of the story that I find stultifying. I suppose to give what was going on in the book that first drove me to causing this large hole in the drywall next to my chair with my head would/will be a spoiler so I'll put it under a "spoiler tag".

When our hero was telling his psychiatrist about his obsessive love/infatuation with the victim it went on, and on, and on, and on, and on........and on. It was so long that I was just about ready to discard the book....or possibly just go screaming into the night.

There's also another problem at least for me.

I saw the movie. While the movie isn't as deep a story nor quite the same, it's still the same story and when things begin to roll and fall into place it's impossible not to see where everything is going. I assume that if you don't have that handicap the story flows much better.

So, I wasn't thrilled. I don't know if I'll try another. The synopsis of the next book in this series leads me to believe it will  also default to interpersonal angst instead of being a court room mystery/drama. I'll decide later.

So, 3 stars.

I had this weird dream last night. I was at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, and... here, let me give you my reconstruction...

HILLARY CLINTON: [on podium, in front of huge crowd] And now, our prosecutor is going to read out a list of indictments against my opponent, Donald Trump. I want you all to say whether you think he's innocent or... GUILTY!

PROSECUTOR: Thank you Hillary. Let's get started. Indictment one: sexual assault. Jill Harth recently accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in 1997. Do you think he's innocent or guilty?

MAN IN CROWD: Some parts of her story ring true, but she's changed it a lot of times.

WOMAN IN CROWD: Yeah, it's hard to know what's going on.

SECOND MAN IN CROWD: And it's all hearsay.

PROSECUTOR: So, what do we think?

CROWD: Presumed innocent!

PROSECUTOR: I can't hear you.

CROWD: PRESUMED INNOCENT!!

PROSECUTOR: Thank you, that's a great answer! And now, indictment two: rape. Katie Johnson, in another recent deposition, claimed that "she was subject to extreme sexual and physical abuse by Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, including forcible rape during a four month time span, when she was still only a minor of age 13." What do we think? Innocent or guilty?

MAN IN CROWD: This is hearsay too!

WOMAN IN CROWD: But she does have a witness, "Tiffany Doe".

SECOND MAN IN CROWD: It could be politically motivated though. Hard to tell. All the same, she should have her day in court.

PROSECUTOR: So, what do we think?

CROWD: Presumed innocent!

PROSECUTOR: I can't hear you.

CROWD: PRESUMED INNOCENT!!

PROSECUTOR: You're all such terrific guys! So, indictment three: fraud and racketeering. Donald Trump's "Trump University" is the subject of several lawsuits, including two class action suits filed in California and one filed in New York by then-attorney general Eric Schneiderman. The many petitioners claim that they were swindled out of sums of up to $60,000 dollars in exchange for courses that were essentially worthless. What do we think? Innocent or guilty?

MAN IN CROWD: You gotta admit there's a lot of evidence.

WOMAN IN CROWD: I read the playbook when the judge ruled that it could be released. Disgusting.

SECOND MAN IN CROWD: But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I need to hear the other side before I make up my mind. And hey, caveat emptor.

PROSECUTOR: So, what do we want?

CROWD: Due process!

PROSECUTOR: I can't hear you.

CROWD: DUE PROCESS!

PROSECUTOR: I still can't hear you.

CROWD: DUE PROCESS!!!

[A chant starts up]

One, two, three, four
We must all respect the law!
Six, seven, eight, nine
Stay the right side of the line!

HILLARY CLINTON: Thank you, thank you, thank you! See, that's the America I'm fighting for. A country where the rule of law is paramount, where due process is respected, and where everyone is presumed innocent until they're proven guilty. Even Donald Trump.

I enjoyed reading Presumed Innocent all the way to the twisty end of the novel. The courtroom scenes and legal explanations of this crime novel were particularly interesting.

This is the first book I remember my mom recommending to me as an adult. And what a read!

You always wonder if a book you loved decades ago will hold up to your memories. Published in 1987, this is dated at times/not politically correct, but still, SO worth a read. Turow is an attorney who knows his way around a courtroom and it shows. 461 pages and he had me hanging on every word.

If you want to be swept away by a courtroom thriller, this is a great one to try. I recently read the most recent book in this series, Suspect, but haven't read the other ten books! So I decided to reread this one and then try the series.

Edward Hermann did an amazing job with the audio narration, too. This is a murder mystery that's low on violence - but, fair warning, has a fair amount of sex. It's not gratuitous, important to the story, but if that bugs you, try something else.

So glad this one lived up to my memory of it. Once again, very hard to put down.

Book on CD performed by Edward Herrmann


From the book jacket: Rusty Sabich, Kindle County’s longtime chief deputy prosecutor, has been asked to investigate the rape and murder of one of his colleagues. Carolyn Polhemus was strong, sensuous, and magnetic; she was also clearly ambitious and quite possibly unscrupulous. Her murder has been an embarrassment to Rusty’s boss, Raymond Horgan, who is facing a serious challenge in the upcoming election and who looks to Rusty for a fast solution to the case that will help save him politically. What Horgan doesn’t know is that, only a few months before she was murdered, Carolyn Polhemus and Rusty Sabich were lovers.

My reactions
This is book # 1 in the Kindle County Legal Thriller series. It’s a fast-paced story with several twists and turns and lots of political and personal intrigue to keep the reader guessing and turning pages. I don’t go to many movies, but I did see this one, starring Harrison Ford as Rusty. So, I knew where things were headed going into the novel. Still, Turow’s tight writing gave me the sense of suspense and intrigue and impending doom that I expect from a mystery/thriller like this. final reveal is a bit of a stunner.

Edward Hermann did a marvelous job of narrating the audio. He set a good pace and kept the story moving.

When it comes to courtroom dramas, you'll find nothing that tops this well-crafted, sinuous tale! The book came out in the 80s but shows zero signs of being dated. And nothing is taken away from the fact that this has inspired thousands of other books in the genre.

I'm struck by the detailed view of the judge/prosecutor/client relationship. Add to that the intriguing police procedural aspect and you have a real page-tuner. The human stakes could not be higher for all of the characters involved. What an awesome ride!

There are times when I read a paragraph again, not because I didn’t understand it but because the author uses language so beautifully. Scott Turow obviously delights in the use of the English language. Such delight would be wasted if he didn’t also come up aces in the plot and character department. He captured my attention from the start although not so much with the plot, at first, as with his acerbic descriptions of the characters. By the time I needed to figure out who did what, I knew who was who.

This book is a courtroom drama and it predictably spends most of its time in the courtroom or preparing for the courtroom. There is a twist and that is that the main character is a Public Prosecutor who is himself accused of murdering a colleague with whom he had a secret affair. By the end of the book, I had just barely figured out ‘who-dunnit’ – just barely. I felt that my intellect was respected, as well as my need for a good story and a further something to think about in terms of the book’s comment on human nature.

I almost put this down before I had finished the first section. The prose is stilted, like this guy was reaching for Hemingway without realizing that Hemingway sucks. The story is slow to take off because the narrator is an uber-solipsistic white dude for whom women only exist as mechanisms of self-understanding — a problem that's replicated at the level of the novel itself. Chunks of it read like soft-core porn by and for the kind of cliché straight cis men who don't know where the clitoris is but think they do. And there are a bunch of racist characterizations and cheap ethnoracial references meant to compensate for lack of actual description. Bad, bad, bad.

I'm giving the book two stars because once Turow gets into the central trial, he juggles information in a clever and compelling way. The writing feels less affected in the courtroom scenes, even when he throws in criminal defense law pedagogy. This is the stuff I picked up this book for. The ending, though, is not redeeming.