4.5 stars ... It was just a little too long. Otherwise, this was a stellar reading experience.

I'm doing a bunch of challenges this year. And a couple led me to reading this book, & to reading Turow for the first time. And I'm
so grateful for that. I might not have gotten around to this otherwise, & that would be a shame.

This book has been out for over 30 years, & made into a movie. So there isn't much I can add to the conversation around it. I'll just say it's as much a character study as it is a procedural crime story, as much the story of a messy relationship as that of a trial, as introspective as it is cinematic.

Also, somehow I guessed the culprit early on - just a hunch. But the book was so well-written that I gave up my guess early on & went along for the ride. You should, too.

Този съдебен трилър е един от любимите ми, както и филма с Харисън Форд, в ролята на Ръсти Сабич.

Моята оценка - 4,5*.

Препоръчвам!

This book drags terribly, starts slow, really slow then picks up a bit and then halfway through becomes predictable and painful. Most characters are unlikeable, especially the main one, with a few exceptions. I listened at 2x speed and it was not enough. Not intriguing or exciting and had the culprit figured halfway through.

‘Presumed Innocent’ by Scott Turow is very literary in tone because of the main character’s internal monologues and his mournful story narration. Chief Prosecutor Rusty Sabich tells of being accused and put on trial for the murder of his ex-lover Carolyn Polhemus. Rusty is married and has a seven-year-old son Nat. His guilt at betraying his wife Barbara and worrying about his son fuels his introspection. Why did he become so enamored with Carolyn Polhemus? The terror of what the future might be like even if he is not convicted does not prevent Rusty from emotionally whipping himself continuously with a very sad self-examination.

Raymond Horgan is losing the Kindle County voters in his election bid to keep his prosecuting attorney job which he has held for twelve years. Horgan’s opponent, Nico Della Guardia, wants Horgan’s job especially after being fired nine months ago by Rusty acting under orders from Horgan. Nico was a deputy prosecuting attorney working for Horgan and Rusty. Both Horgan and Nico are hoping for the mayor’s endorsement to boost their image with the voters.

Caught between the two campaigners, all Rusty wants is to keep his own chief prosecutor job without antagonizing either one of the competing lawyers. But when Carolyn’s body is discovered in her apartment, hogtied, possibly murdered by a blow to her head, Rusty is suddenly the number one suspect. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to Rusty. The truth is Rusty had been having a secret affair with Carolyn, but she had ghosted him four months ago. They both worked as deputy prosecutors in Horgan’s office, so it became obvious to Rusty she was definitely avoiding him by her evading him in meetings and being suddenly too busy for after-hour drinks. Rusty couldn’t stand it! He kept calling her, even breaking down in front of Barbara, his wife, which is how she finds out about Rusty’s obsession and affair with Carolyn.

Rusty is not going to get any husband-of-the-year recommendations from Barbara after that. The only bright spot in his life is Nathaniel. In public, Barbara plays the dutiful wife. In private - oh my. She always has been the emotionally colder one in their marriage, but now there is definitely a very icy rage boiling off from her. She is a mathematician going to university for her Ph.D., hoping to be a teacher.

The pressure to find out who really killed Carolyn is enormous. Rusty knows he has to keep his grief in check and figure it out. He thinks his marriage and job are toast, but it is important that Barbara stay on his side for Nat’s sake as well as for the reporters. Afterwards, he doesn’t know where to go or what he will do. But going to prison is definitely NOT the plan!

I was pleasantly surprised by Turow’s writing style! This book is not written in the typical bleak brusqueness or black comedy of most murder mysteries. Instead it felt like I was reading a literary memoir. I liked it.

The one quibble I had was the character of Barbara and how Rusty never saw her as ruthless and scary as I did! Omg, she hog-tied a dead body after murdering Carolyn! After Rusty figures it out, he lets her go with Nat! I'd be scared of her on so many levels! But Rusty was thinking he deserved her wrath, I guess. I think we need to recognize when murders are beyond the normal, run-of-the-mill rage/vengeance boundaries, and I think Barbara went WAY into mean girl, maybe even a touch psychopathic, territory!

This is one of the best books that I have read recently. It is a great legal thriller cum murder mystery. No wonder the book finds mention in both the top 100 mystery/crime novel lists published by the Britain-based Crime Writers' Association and by the Mystery Writers of America. Both the lists were published in the nineties and feature some of the finest specimens of crime writing. The lists can be found here - Link

The story is narrated by Rozat K. Sabich aka Rusty, chief deputy prosecutor of Kindle county who is also the protagonist. The story begins with the murder of Carolyn, another prosecuting attorney, with whom Rusty had an affair and never got over his obsession of her. Rusty gets the responsibility of investigating the crime but himself ends up getting accused of the murder and faces trial.

The book features some really great court room scenes, complex characters and portrays so many human emotions and frailties. Illicit passion, betrayal, corruption, dirty politics, jealousy, friendship, paternal feelings, family bonds - everything finds a place in the story. The author has also explained quite a few legal technicalities which makes it easier for the reader to understand some of the complexities of the trial. The mystery is excellent and the very few would be able to guess the identity of the culprit.

Rusty, accustomed to putting criminals behind bars, is now the accused and feels how is it to be on the other side. He talks about his obsession with Carolyn, his childhood, his strained relationship with his wife, his fear of missing out his son's childhood if he is sent to prison. Some of his ramblings is actually a bit boring and do not fit in the story.The author's use of the English language is impressive but somehow I felt at times it was not compatible with the character or the story. e.g. a person, who is a prosecutor not a poet, facing a murder charge is unlikely to use phrases like "doors and windows of my soul are thrown open to a fundamental gratitude". It is my only criticism of the novel.

The book is not just a thriller but Scott Turow's attempt to explore the intricacies of the human mind and he has done a commendable job. I would recommend the book to lovers of legal thrillers, murder mysteries, psychological thrillers if he/she does not mind the ramblings of the protagonist.

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.

Bought this in a charity shop in Canberra eighteen months ago; finally decided to give it a go after seeing it’s been adapted for an AppleTV show. If the show, and Jack Gyllenhaal’s performance, lives up even to half of Rusty’s complex inner psyche, and Turow’s expertly woven, winding and questioning narrative, then it will be a miracle of adaptation. One could argue this is a mystery novel ‘for the lawyers’, but the often confounding American legal lingo is merely a vessel for the cynical and doubtful journey of judicial morality. Don’t let the scant blurb belie the gradual genius of this book.

I'm surprised I didn't like this. The reader was pretty good, but I just didn't like the way the author wrote. There was too much back story dumping irrelevant data that detracted from the main story. I might have stuck with it longer, except I didn't like the main character enough.

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.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. I honestly did, especially after reading some of the positive reviews. But the tense of the narrative just really threw off the whole story, and gave it a certain rhythm/voice that I did not feel suited the story at all. I actually found it rather annoying at times, and somewhat unrealistic at times for the pace.

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 wish Goodreads had a feature when you add a new to-be-read book that you could make a note about who recommended it. I think it was an article about the best books of some category or some author's books that inspired. In any case, I remember that this was recommended as great mystery writing.
So I picked it up several times after putting it aside because I was sure that I must have missed something. Finally I took Judy's advice for when you are not sure that you want to read a book; read the last chapter to see if you it's worth going back to read the rest.
Conclusion - I just did not like this book. Didn't care for the misogynistic characters and don't plan to ever pick up anything else by this author.
If you enjoyed it - great.