Story 4.25 stars**
Audio 3.75 stars**
Narrator n   Edward Herrmannn

I met Scott Turow when he came to visit my college to promote "Presumed Innocent", which I thought was a great book at the time. I haven't read it in almost 20 years (Christ, has it been that long since I was in college?), but I remember some of the details in his writing that made him stand out from all the other best-selling thriller writers out there, most notably John Grisham. Both of them were inevitably compared to each other because of their courtroom settings and knowledge of the legal profession, but Turow was generally trying to do something different than Grisham. It's Turow's details (his naturalistic dialogue, his attempts to flesh out minor characters, his reflections into the darkness of the human condition) that I appreciated more from a writer's perspective and that I probably recall better than the actual plot, which was, if I recall correctly, a seemingly run-of-the-mill whodunnit.

This is legit just Twilight for old white guys.

It wastes no time spouting off casual racism, sexism, and homophobia as it plods through its slipshod plot, both through its main character and the side pieces that surround him. Whatever, I thought as I read, I guess the main character is supposed to be an asshole? Surely it's gotta serve the story somehow... Nah. Rusty is simply a racist, sexist homophobe, both in his speech and in his mental machinations, and you're gonna love him just the way he is. When it becomes clear that the author actually expects you to sympathize with this motherfucker, you roll your eyes hard enough to propel you down a journey through history as you ruminate on all the poor souls a system stuffed with these crap biscuits has let down. I was half expecting Rusty to sheepishly protest he can't be racist at some point because he has black friends, but no one ever takes him or anyone else to the burner for their comfortably held biases, and he would've been capping anyhow because he doesn't even have any black friends.

And look, I understand this may have been the way people in law enforcement and other governmental positions actually spoke back then. But Scott Turow works it in so nonchalantly only to do nothing but reinforce it through the story he tells; I have to raise up my leg and mark him as being a part of the reason why elderly, conservative white folks consider this way of thinking to be okay. The plot centers itself upon the murder of a woman that Turow uses a very creative vocabulary to politely call a slut, and how a black man he uses a cascade of coded language to call the n-word took part in a scheme that our oh so sanctimonious hero finds himself apparently victimized by. Never mind that this woman navigated her way through a boy's club to her position as a prosecuting attorney. So what if the black man overcame a deck stacked against him to become a judge? No, these two are bad to the bone due to reasons owed to what they are rather than who they are: a slut and a n*****.

The fact that all of this turns out to be a subplot that distracts from the truth of the book's mystery without ever confronting the bias that makes the distraction possible stinks of a writer who holds those biases himself. I could talk about the confoundingly uneven characterizations, the weakness of all the parts that take place outside the trial, and the toked up drama of a pretty unrealistic case, but I just can't get past the fact that Scott Turow writes like a trash human-being. If you're interested in the legal thriller genre, I strongly recommend Defending Jacob by William Landay instead. Landay perfected the formula and did it without discriminating against anyone.

now i am hooked. This was such a great, easy and creative book. i was hooked after the first page.

The characters were easy to fall in love with and follow, along with the story. the author made the mental visions so easy and vivid of the surroundings and the characters actions felt so real.

i would highly recommend this author and this book.

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.

This is one of Turow's first legal thrillers, a category which he may have invented as far as I know. If that is your kinda thing, then Turow is your kind of writer. I found it a bit redundant and containing stereotypes and never went back to read it again. I believe it was made into a blockbuster movie with Harrison Ford in 1990. It may be that the film is better than the book but feel free to disagree in the comments!

I recently re-read this, and it's still wonderful. The writing is sharp and brooding, and the plotting is superb.

I first read Presumed Innocent almost fifteen years ago. I'd been thinking of going to law school and Presumed Innocent is on the list of books that many law schools send you the summer before you begin studying. I remember thinking that the book spent more time on legal technicalities than the other thrillers that I'd read. Reading Presumed Innocent with an eye to joining the profession gave it a certain air as well.

Now after years as an entirely different sort of lawyer, the detective work, legal technicalities and procedural law aspects continue to delight me. Though I've read the book and watched the movie and am vaguely aware that a twist is sure to come, Presumed Innocent draws me in as though it were completely new. Scott Turow's writing remains fresh and engaging.

Other reviewers have mentioned that the book has lost its impact for them, that they're not as impressed by it years later. I have a very different reaction to the book -- years later and after close to 15 years studying and practicing law, I find that Presumed Innocent has grown to be even more gripping and entertaining. Though you might have expected me to figure out the ending given that I'd read the book before and seen the movie, but the enjoyment comes from how Turow built up the suspense and described the trial. It's the execution of the concept that makes Presumed Innocent a legal thriller that will last for years to come. I'm very much looking forward to reading Turow's next book Innocent that comes out on May 4, 2010.

ISBN-10: 0446676446 - Paperback
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (December 1, 2000), 512 pages.
Review copy provided by the publisher.

Presumed Innocent was published in 1987. This is another one of those twenty-five year old books that I seem to read frequently and some say is quite dated. I remember those days pretty well; I was in graduate school at SUNY at Stony Brook on Long Island. It was after computers but before cell phones. In my mind I can be living in the 1980s!

What happens when a top lawyer in the office of the prosecuting attorney is charged with murder? Presumed Innocent is about an experienced lawyer being prosecuted and helping to prepare his own defense. The first third of the book is the story of the events leading up to the trial. The remaining two-thirds is about the trial. The author is an attorney who knows about trials from his personal experience of participating in actual trials.

This is a long book: four hundred thirty one pages. Our defendant, Rusty Sabich, struggles through a long trial that is told to the reader in significant detail including the personalities of the judge, the prosecuting attorneys, the defense attorneys, and several of the witnesses. About three-quarters of the way through the book, my interest and involvement in the trial peaked but I knew that there was another one hundred pages to go. I am impatient for a conclusion and am annoyed that I have been brought to this moment too early by the author. My feelings may replicate the feelings of the defendant, an interesting aspect of the book. But I am not sure that this is a feeling in the reader that the author should desire since it seems quite possible that early climactic moments might cause the reader to lose interest and stop reading before the end. For me, the considerable number of unknowns keeps me reading even when I believe that the high will likely change into a low before rising up again for the actual conclusion.

But I find that I did not have enough confidence in the skill of author Scott Turow. He understands the lows that may follow significant highs. His protagonist says, “And my initial euphoria is long past, given way to a suppressed melancholy.” I am sorry, Mr. Turow, that I doubted you. For there are several concluding events necessitated by the many strands of the story. It all did leave me feeling satisfied and entertained, good feelings for the end of a mystery novel.

Since this is a book published twenty-five years ago,you want to say, sure, it’s missing the DNA evidence. And so it is. But Presumed Innocent has some staying power. It is still a good read that many years later. Eighty-three GR readers have reviewed this book so far in 2012. I am not sure what qualifies a book in the mystery genre to be called a classic but a 3.99 average in 29,278 (well, 279 now) ratings means people like it. I guess I am just your average reader since I give it 3.99 stars!

It is interesting to note that there is a follow up book  Innocent  published 22 years later (2010) with many of the same characters. That one is on my TBR shelf along with most of the other Turow books.

Every so often, a new writer comes along to refresh a genre grown stale. Turow brought the mystery/legal thriller back.

4.5⭐️

For a long time in the book I felt it was so completely a male dominated novel that, while it would be well written, it would be no more than factually competent in terms of court procedures. Apart from one being the voiceless murder victim and another the wife of the narrator, the women were in minor roles, secretaries, assistants, cleaning ladies. Other than the victim was there any need to have them there?

All the action was between the defence lawyers and prosecuting attorneys of Kindle County, somewhere in the American Midwest. Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rusty Sabich has had an affair with a colleague, Carolyn Polhemus, an affair he has kept secret. Then Carolyn is found murdered in her own apartment. Rusty is put in charge of the investigation and gets caught in what seems to be a web of intrigue, business and political rivalry and personal in-fighting. Evidence is brought to light that shows Rusty had been in Carolyn's apartment on the day she was killed. He moves from being chief investigator to chief suspect and faces trial on a charge of murder.

In the course of the trial, which is brilliantly described, we find more about Carolyn's history. An attractive and ambitious woman, she was happy to advance her career with sexual favours and providing under the counter and illegal assistance in corrupt activities. It seems most of the senior male officers of Kindle County's prosecution and legal department had found her attractions impossible to resist at various times. As cracks appear in the evidence and widen, Rusty's possible guilt becomes more and more doubtful.

But, if Rusty didn't do it, who was the murderer? Enter the women to turn a courtroom drama, and a very good one, into a disturbing murder mystery and lift the novel from good and emotionally moving to outstanding. Suddenly the men become the bit part players. Then, in a final breath we are called on to ask, just how innocent was Rusty Sabich?