One of those books with a good story line to begin with, but then ceased to stay interesting.

Mystery series - I have always felt that if I read enough of Turow's books I could become a lawyer. His attention to detail and the legal factoids make for interesting reading. A judge on the Illinois Appeals Court is having personal, legal and gang-related problems. He seems to be a good guy but life is getting in the way. And he is the deciding voice in a rape case going back many years; past the statute of limitations. Hence, the name.
No Canadian or pharmacy references.

*content warning: sexual assault*
*Spoilers*

I picked up this book from the library entirely based on the cover and the one sentence blurb on the back. Limitations is about a judge who gets assigned a brutal rape case and has a recovered memory about essentially participating in a gang rape of a young woman back at university, which makes him feel conflicted about the sentencing of the young men on trial, because he has done so much good in his life since that time. On top of that, his wife is going through radiation for cancer, and he has started receiving death threats from an unknown person.

I was too dumb or tired to understand a LOT of the industry speak in regards to appellate courts and the US justice system, so I’m sure if I knew more about that, the book would have been “better”. I still enjoyed it, it was a quick read - though I did pick who the “stalker” was very early on.

I know this book was written in 2006 and things have changed a lot since then, but I can’t shake the anger I feel knowing that the narrator, who is a judge and is responsible for handing out sentences based on people’s actions, is just walking around knowing he raped someone.

Just because he tracked her down and called her (not apologising, by the way) doesn’t absolve him or his uni mates, no matter how long ago it was. I realise people grow and change and that the book (and the trial at the centre of it) was based on statutes of limitations, so literally, how long we will allow something to sit without being acted upon. It also bothered me how he mentions wanting forgiveness from her. I just thought, how dare you.

Again, 2006 was a minute ago, and I’m sure I’ve said and done some things in my past that I would not like to be held accountable for now BUT to be someone high up in a court system, responsible for sentences regarding sexual assault crimes, should not be rapists themselves, surely??

The actual plot and writing would have been a solid 4 stars were it not for that gross little subplot. I can’t shake the icky feeling it gave me.

Presumed Innocent is one of Turow's primo best books. Now there comes legal mysteries featuring George Mason from Personal Injuries. Originally commissioned and published by the New York Times Magazine, this edition contains additional material.

Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason, His days as a criminal defense lawyer are long past. At fifty-nine he has sat as a judge in the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. What's disturbing Mason so deeply. Is it his wife's recent cancer diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening emails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific cause of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge? LIMITATIONS explores all these thoughts.

Judge George Mason is in the final year of a decade-long term on he State Court of Appeals for the
Third Appellate District, an area principally composed of Kindle County. The chance to run for the appellate court had unexpectedly arisen only a year after he had been elected a Superior Court Judge, presiding over a criminal courtroom downstairs in this same building, the Central Branch Courthouse. Many friends had discouraged him from considering the higher court, predicting he would find this life of trial combat. bit the job--hearing arguments, reflecting on briefs and precedents, writing opinions has suited him. To George Mason, the law has always posed the fundamental riddles life has asked him to solve.

In Limitations, Scott Turow, the master of the legal thriller, returns to Kindle County with a page-turning entertainment that asks the biggest questions of all. Ingeniously, and with great economy of style, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law but of human understanding itself.

Great Read - Highly recommend!!!

3.5 stars. An engaging legal thriller about Judge George Mason who is deliberating over a gang rape case, where four defendants assaulted a 15 year old girl, rendered drunk and unconscious. The incident had been video taped so there is no doubt that it had occurred, but the victim, was unaware of what had happened until the tape came to light over four years later. The issue is that the statute of limitations for a victim to report a rape is three years from the time of the rape. The Judge has been receiving threatening messages and his wife Patrice is undergoing radiation therapy for cancer.

A satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 2007.

Relatively slight compared to Turow's other novels, there was less to chew on, less to hook you in, than usual. There was still the rounded characterisation and legal procedural detail that I'm used to, but as a huge Turow fan, I was left a little disappointed.

A short one. A tale of a judge (George Mason, featured in other Turow books) faced with making a decision in an appeals court, while reflecting on a dark secret from his past. Should he let his own experience temper his decision or can he let the law decide? It isn't that simple, of course, because laws are subject to interpretation. It is the trial court's interpretation that he must choose to either affirm or reject.

Meanwhile, he is targeted by an unknown person who is sending threats that continue to get worse. Is his life in danger? His wife's?

I have always enjoyed Scott Turow. Legal "thrillers" almost always leave me unable to suspend disbelief, because, as a lawyer, I rankle at the obvious legal flaws introduced by authors either unintentionally (by those who wouldn't know better) or intentionally (by even such greats as John Grisham) in order to make the plot work. I cannot recall any instance where Turow has succumbed to that temptation.

But Limitations goes far beyond avoiding that flaw. I attribute the less than stellar ratings by some readers to the fact that the greatness of this small work may possibly be appreciated best by an attorney.

There is always a tension between the turmoil and messiness and emotion and humanity of life, on the one hand, and the idyllically rigorous logic of the law that is supposed to rise above that other, messy milieu. At its best, especially at the level of appellate practice where this novel is set, reason should reign supreme. Above all, a court's decisions must make excellent logical sense on many levels. That is not nearly as easy a task as it may seem to a lay person, because the language necessary to the drafting of statutes and rendering opinions is inherently less than mathematical in its clarity, while the events of life rarely confine themselves to the circumstances foreseen by legislatures or presented to appellate courts.

In this novel Turow is completely true to both sides of this tension, crafting a story with both the reality and complexity and messiness of life, and the aspiration of the law and courts and judges to use logic and reason to render a decision that rises above and makes sense of that messiness in the context of the law.

In doing so, using a case ostensibly about the statute of limitations, he recognizes the human limitations that judges (and lawyers) have to deal with in the attempt to meet the ideal of the law. I do not want to spoil anyone's reading of this fine book, but let me just say that the climax of this novel for me was not the "dramatic" climax that may have, for many readers, seemed less than ideal. For me it was the text of the judge's draft decision, which was ultimately the focus of the protagonist's most difficult challenge -- rendering a decision in a difficult case.

The greatness of this book sneaked up on me. But it is great. It may not be the "thriller" that the genre seems to demand or that a reader may expect, but I doubt that is the target at which Turow was aiming. The target is the tension between life and the law, he hit that target straight dead center.

Short and good, this story encompasses many of Turow's best characters (at least in reference). A sitting Kindle County appellate Judge is overseeing a case of rape that brings up memories from his college years of a young woman who was "trained" by and his unease in the similarities in making a decision on the fate of 4 young men. In addition, he has been receiving threats and taunts that are suspicious, and they think are tied to a gang head in prison....but is it what it seems?
Limitations refers to "statute of limitations" of certain crimes and laws, and if it did or did not apply to the case they are trying to decide.
I love Turow's stories.

Turow does a good job of creating interesting characters, like the judge who never bathes and the law clerk who is pathologically shy, prudish, and a hoarder. Yet in Turow’s hands they come to life. This book has a philosophical side to it, asking the question: “when is justice not served by sticking to the law too closely?” The chief protagonist also does some remembering that leads to much-needed soul searching.

Found this book while rearranging / repacking. Not a bad story May have to go back and read some others by Scott Throw.

Limitations / Scott Turow. I had forgotten how much I enjoy Turow’s writing, his sardonic humor, his intelligent plotting. It’s another Kindle County trial, this time focusing on the Chief Appellate Judge. And it was a treat to have an ethical, sensitive, and smart protagonist and, still, a very current story: sexual assault. My kind of beach book.