Legal thriller, high on politics, told in the first person by Rusty Sabich, husband, father, #2 prosecutor and #1 suspect. A fancy smooth talker when he wants to be and he does a lot of it. Sometimes a bit too much for my taste. Especially when it comes to backgrounds and such. Better, much better is when he deals with the present. The murder of Carolyn, who he shared a workplace and a bed with. Yup, Rusty's been a naughty boy. But is he guilty as well? A juicy case with multiple interests and a vague line between truth and lies. Slippery stuff.

The show was better. FRTC.
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The Apple TV series for this book just started last night - with ... hello. Jake Gyllenhaal. And now I need to read this.

It's a rare day indeed when I say - I hope the book is as good as the show. Freaking addictive and mind binding.

A famous novel I had been meaning to read since long, Presumed Innocent didn't disappointment me. It is a complex, multi-layered murder-mystery cum court-room-drama that hooked me from the start to finish. Though I had some trouble with the meandering narration, especially that dealing with the narrator's thoughts and feelings, in the end, I felt the satisfaction of having read something good.

7/10

An enjoyable legal thriller that really hits it stride in the courtroom and less so in the bits outside of the courtroom. I thought it was an interesting, and quite novel, idea to set the first pages after the murder has occurred and then fill in the blanks as you go along. A lot of back story was needed to get the reader up to speed and this is when things were a little slow and sometimes less interesting with the political campaign less absorbing but we know what is just around the corner.

When the story gets into the courtroom the book was hard to put down. The dialogue flowed with ease and there were many times when you were keen to just read that next chapter to find out what was going to happen instead of going to sleep.

Whilst the solution to the murder and side plots weren't all that great in the end it had some of the best courtroom interrogations I've read in a long time.

If only the whole story was as tight as those scenes this would have been much higher rated overall. Worth a read if this is a genre you're interested in.

If you enjoy this try: "The Lincoln Lawyer" by Michael Connelly

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.

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.

First of all, I was more than surprised to find out that Turow came before Grisham. This book was published in 1987 while Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill came out a year later, and actually encouraged Grisham to embark on a writing career.

Presumed Innocent is a well crafted blend of mystery and legal thriller. The plot has many twists and turns and the reader is empathizing with Rusty Sabich all the way. It has great court room scenes, sharp dialogue, and good character development, filled with all the saucy human emotions and foibles that fiction readers savor - forbidden passion, betrayal, corruption, nasty local politics, and bitter jealousy.

Despite continuing on in his writing, this debut novel probably remains as Turow's best.

A book that felt like it took me an entire century to read. To be fair, I think we could have edited out about 100 pages of it.

However, well done, very well done. The ending surprised me.

What I’m looking most forward to is reading the other 2 in the trilogy as they seem to be written with a few or several years between the writing and I want to see Rusty age in real-time. I think I’ve heard that Presumed Guilty that was just released in January begins with Rusty being 77 years old. He is 40 in this book. My guess is that this will be an incredible character study to read the next 2 knowing that Turow is investing his own aging wisdom into Rusty for Presumed Guilty.

I will report back. Standby though because first I must soothe my Alaska obsession and read that passion away with a book about an Iditarod vet and Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey and another about Wolves by Seth Kantner and maybe something by John McPhee.

This game changer is still a compelling and somewhat disturbing read even if you know who killed Rusty's mistress.

Psychological thriller or legal thriller? You be the judge

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

Now i get what all the praise is about! If anything i enjoyed it more than i had hoped, even after reading its accolades. I mean what else can i say?! It deserves all it got! & imo it's still in a league of its own, so many years (& great legal thrillers) later. But i do really want to recommend the audiobook. The narrator was exceptional!! You could feel the tension. It's a long 1 (about 16 hours) but i genuinely wasn't bored for a second. I felt like i could close my eyes & be IN that courtroom! So good. So smart. If anything, I'm actually in mourning now that its over. I know i can't possibly expect the entire series to be this extraordinary but I'm still super excited that there's more.

Read this one some years ago but the memory of what a terrific book it is has remained with me ever since.

A gripping work of crime fiction, splendidly written by Scott Turow, which kept me guessing to the last page. An exploration of the mind of its leading character, Rusty Sabich, who narrates this tale of political, social, and sexual tension. Rusty is a prosecutor in Kindle Country, no doubt a fictional stand-in for Cook County in Illinois who is assigned to investigate the rape and murder of a co-worker, with whom he has been having an affair. But all the evidence points to Rusty as the prime suspect.

The novel was a massive best seller and justifiably so as it is a superb literary thriller.
I bought the hard cover edition when it was first published in 1987 and it was already in its tenth printing and had also been a major book club selection.

Never thought the 1990 film version, directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Harrison Ford, although very successful, quite captured the brilliance of the original material.