I feel that the best way to describe this book is to recount my thought process during one scene:

Is this a sexual scene with a pregnant person? No it can't be Amanda, you're only thinking that because every interaction that Stern has had with a female non-family member has been sexual in nature. That's probably why Turow made her pregnant, as a non-sexual interest for Stern. Okay now they're both naked in the hot tub. This is weird. Oh God it is sexual in nature, this is disgusting! Okay Amanda, Stern just went through a tough ordeal, he's just being weird right now. *Several hours of listening later* Dear God, she was into it too. This book is horrifying!

Why anyone thinks this is a good book is an absolute mystery to me. It is the story of a man who has tried so hard to protect the women of his life (misogynistic attitude included) when in fact they were protecting him because he is such a LOSER! He finds himself in a world of strangers after his wife dies even though he has friends and children because he never took any time getting to know any of them. This book is at best eyeroll inducing because of the terrible awkwardness of the main character and at worst a soap opera that drips with unnecessary drama.

And imagine my surprise when reading "1L," Turow's non-fiction tale of his time at law school, I find that he has given someone the pseudonym of Sandy Stern! So sorry to whomever is the real-life Sandy Stern, Scott Turow thinks you're a loser with weird sexual predilections.

First things first. I generally really like reading Scott Turow. I like the legal angles. I loved reading is nonfiction work, One L.

My issue with this book is Sandy Stern. We are meant to feel sympathetic towards him — he loses his wife to suicide, he learns later that she was hiding a herpes diagnosis from him.

He consistently speaks with some charming authority. He’s a celebrated attorney who seems to hold his professional responsibility first, no matter what. It’s the rest of him that makes me shake my head.

This guy is a womanizer who acts as if he is doing it accidentally. From any other perspective, in a version of the book where Stern is not our protagonist, my uneducated guess is he’d be diagnosed as having a narcissistic/ borderline personality disorder.

This guy stumbles into bed with every damn woman he encounters except his daughter. He is “overcome with feeling” and inexplicably cannot help but put the moves on them.

He refers to this as a “temporary insanity” and is unapologetic to the women he has romanced (I use that term loosely, almost ironically).

I’m just done with books romanticizing these behaviors. Is this a lust for life? No. This charm is an alarm.

Was the book well-written? Sure. (It’s maybe 20% too long.) This is not a criticism of the writer’s skill. It’s a plea for writers to give less heroic attention to behaviors / characters like this.

I don't often rate a book a five, nor will I in this book, but close. Very well written story presented with many side stories. A work of fiction that the reader feels he has "solved" the crime, but finds that he is wrong, not once but several times.

Ya desde el principio crees q la historia va ser bastante truculenta xq nada más en el primer capítulo habemus suicidio: Stern, prestigioso abogado, llega a su casa tras un viaje de negocios y descubre que su esposa Clara se ha suicidado sin motivo aparente. A partir de aquí, el libro va a través del viaje de Stern en la búsqueda de respuestas, no solo sobre los motivos de su esposa sino sobre la verdad de su matrimonio. Como preocupación colateral a su cuñado le cae una investigación de la Fiscalía General y aunq al principio una cosa no tiene nada q ver con la otra, resulta q siempre sí, se cruzan los cables.
No le tenía mucha fe a este autor, xq no me había gustado demasiado su otra laureada novela "Se presume inocente". Pero tengo q decir q me equivoqué. La trama es sumamente interesenta, y el suspense más q suficiente para llevarte de la nariz durante todo el libro. El final no te lo esperas en absoluto y auq como buena amante de la romántica, me habría gustado un poco más de romance, obviamente este libro no va de eso y no le hace falta en absoluto.

I first read Turow's Ultimate Punishment some years ago and loved his style of documentary.

The Burden of Proof is the first of his fiction books I have read but I really enjoyed it as well. This is a complex book and every character in Turow's books are developed fully and very complex with backstories and personalities. You might not like all of the characters but they do fit together to tell the story. In this book the son is a jerk, a stupid jerk... but a jerk.

I thought the main theme of the story was one of justice, which might be fleeting but is always provided by karma. I also thought a great deal about forgiveness. It is also about how we perceive our lives and how work often becomes the most important part of the day to day life.

Great story... happy reading.

Sandy Stern comes home to find his wife dead. He is also representing his brother-in-law as a grand jury is investigating him for trading fraud. As Sandy tries to figure out the "real" story behind the grand jury investigation the rest of his family comes into play. Scott Turow did an excellent job with this book. It was well paced and the story was intricately woven. Definitely an author to read any chance you get!

Scott Turow had written an award-winning novel Presumed Innocent in 1987. In 1990, he released this second fiction The Burden of Proof that I picked up to read only recently. Scott Turow is a trained and practising lawyer. I was drawn to reading his other books because of Presumed Innocent where the plot, the twists and turns, and the cut and thrust in a court-room setting were so clearly written for a non-lawyer like me to follow the story-line.

The Burden of Proof revolves around the family of Sandy Stern, the defence lawyer who appeared in the earlier book - Presumed Innocent. Sandy had to face two major seemingly unrelated events. One was what appeared to be a suicide of his wife, Clara, when he returned home one late afternoon from an overseas trip on an assignment. The other was a subpoena for his brother-in-law Dixon Hartnell to appear before a United States grand jury to answer to charges of some illegal trades on commodities and futures exchanges. The story was not as simple. Sandy’s family of three grown-up children and a son-in-law had roles to play in this story.

The writer, Scott Turow, had me believe the obvious as he wrote the pages. The guilty parties and motives of actions appeared clear as day. But the obvious is not what it is. The suspense as the plot thickened was kept throughout until Part Three of the book when Scott Turow slowly peeled off layer and layer of veil of obscuration. The guilty parties and real reasons for individual acts of deception and final actions were plainly revealed. There is no doubt in my mind as to why events happened the way they did. The twists were complete and I believe the readers were fooled as intended by the author.

There was a closure for Sandy Stern who was in the centre of his family problem. He maintained his reputation as a honourable defence lawyer who will not do anything to circumvent the codes of professional ethics of his legal profession.

It was a pleasure to read all 582 pages of this novel. I did not feel at all labored. One page leads to another and the story flow was easy to follow. There are not too many characters and Scott Turow wrote a tightly-knitted plot without superfluous passages.

✭✭✭

Not my cup of tea. I will not be reading anymore of Turows novel's.

Update #1
Kate/Katy (who he calls Cara), Clara, Cal, Claudia, Cawley, Klonsky…Kindle County. This is your story. You get to PICK the names, Mr. Turow. This was the choice you made?

And was Mr. Turow perpetually horny the entire time he wrote this book?

Anyway I’m a third of the way through and I’m still waiting for something to happen.

Update #2
Two-thirds of the way through and I’m finally engrossed. Once I began appreciating the pace, the book started growing on me. I am eager to see how the plot lines merge.

Final verdict: It was good. I wasn’t as blown away as others, but it was a good story with detailed characters and a complex yet easy-to-follow plot.

I came back to this author and this series after a long break and I’m not sure I picked up where I left off, this one left me wanting, not fully satisfied. The story is a mystery filled with bits of suspense, but the psychological twists along with the legal maneuverings left me drowning in a giant pile of misdirection. I went with the audio book and that was the wrong call, it just imprisoned me in the slow build, so plodding and so incestuous. There is a decent resolution but by the time I got there, almost 20 hours in, I was defeated, the plot and the characters were completely over-drawn, forced into a resolution.

* My audio edition through Libby had a spell of quality issues, skips and scratches.

This is a character-driven story that is equal parts family and legal drama. Alejandro Stern is in some ways as much a mystery to himself as he is to the reader; the two learn about Stern and what makes him tick through the storyline.

Stern, an attorney, is both embroiled in the defense of his brother-in-law against the United States government, and dealing with his grief and that of his family's in the aftermath of Stern's wife's death.