Four and a half stars. Arthur Raven, a corporate lawyer, is assigned by the court, to defend Rommy Gandolf, an inmate who is facing the death penalty. He is not helped by the fact that Rommy confessed to the murders ten years ago and is now professing his innocence. Arthur's opposition is the original tough prosecutor Muriel Wynn and the arresting detective Larry Starczek. Turow goes deep into the characters and there is not a wasted word in all 540 pages. Highly recommended.

Been a while since I last forced myself to finish a book. I just...it appears he got paid by the word, since it would have been a much more interesting tale at half the amount of pages.


The casual misogyny and racism scattered throughout at least kept it real, if slightly off-putting.

I gave this three very generous stars. This book was a long, hard slog to get through. The overuse of the characters' names in every single sentence became an irritant like fingernails on a chalkboard. It got to the point near the end of the book that their names were turning up TWICE in the same sentence. "Arthur, that just makes it worse, Arthur." The plot just gets completely snowed under with dialogue that is so difficult to wade through.

I like legal stories. Scott Turow writes legal stories. I thought I would really like this book. In fact, I did like the story - it had so much potential, but the writing was just meh. So disappointing because I think in a different author's hands, it could have been a much better book. Rommy "Squirrel" Gandolph is an inmate on death row, convicted for a triple homicide for which ten years later with his death soon to be scheduled, he now claims innocence. This is essentially a story about what really happened that night. There's a lot of background involving the usual suspects in courtroom dramas - prosecutor, judge, defense counsel, cop/investigator, but there's all these contrived romantic storylines among this group that were executed rather poorly and throw off the pacing of the story. Although necessary to develop the plot, they seemed written as an afterthought - just thrown in for good measure to spice up the story a bit. I do enjoy this genre of books, so I might give Turow another go, but I won't be expecting a whole lot.

I liked this book as much as Presumed Innocent but for different reasons. I really liked his characterizations. His characters were human -- flawed and believable. His use of language was elegant, but he was not verbose. I didn't like all the characters, but that made the book more believable.

The most telling point for me was that I wanted to get back to the book whenever I was doing something else. Sometimes, I read a book by gritting my teeth and bulling my way through it, but I find myself not really looking forward to reading it. I always wanted to find out what was going to happen next with Reversible Errors.

An interesting cast of characters set out to uncover the truth of a multiple murder that was supposedly solved years ago. The story moves along quickly and believably with plenty of twists and surprises.

As a former prosecutor, this book grabbed me by the time I was through reading the dust cover. The plot concerns a death-row appeal for a convicted triple murder, and it ranges from good intentions to police misconduct, wilful ignorance, a disgraced judge, a cut-throat prosecutor, and the private attorney who has been tapped by the Court of Appeals to figure out whether the guy scheduled for execution actually did it.

And just under the surface of the technical posturing and investigative plodding and courtroom procedures are the yearnings of everyone involved, whether for redemption or forgiveness, or revenge, or love. Or any combination of those. Turow's prose is, of course, as crisp and insightful as ever, and the twists and turns and raised and dashed hopes of all involved keep unfolding until the last page.

So I think if I was able to pay better attention to this book I would have enjoyed it better but as with other books by this author it has very little to do in court and very much about outside lives of the people involved. So convicted killer says he didn’t do it? What is new? Ha ha what is new is well just maybe he did......

I have read a few Turrow novels, the fist, Presumed Innocent, was a very good read that kept me turning the pages. This was also a well crafted story, however, I did manage to figure out who was the guilty party rather early. None the less, a decent read.

This is a book that I had on my shelf for 20+ years. I pulled it ready to put in the donate pile thinking I will never read it as I’ve gotten so many books since then. I decided I would start to read it and if it didn’t go well, it would go in the pile. I started it, it was long and detailed. I was not sure if I was going to be able to finished it. I finally did. It was a very well-written story about murders and putting the wrong people in prison. Written from the attorney’s point of view. I would have given it a 4 star because of the extreme detail and length which was too much for me, but it really deserved a 5 star because it was well-written, good character development, and I did like the ending.

The world breaks everyone, Papa Hemingway said, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. True enough, if the metaphor is about bones. Bones break, but bones knit, and bones can be stronger for the experience. It’s a strong metaphor, but it doesn’t cover everything, doesn’t include everything that can break.

Bones break, but hearts break too. That’s another metaphor, of course. Hearts don’t break the same way bones break. Bones break and shatter and splinter, and you go to the doctor and get them set and splinted, and they heal and you go on your way. Hearts break, and no doctor can heal them, nothing but time can sweep up the pieces.

The healing of bones is a natural process; with enough time and care the most horrible injury can be made whole. The healing of hearts is a natural process, but sometimes, even with all the time and care in the world, hearts can heal incompletely. There can be sharp shards sticking out or pieces missing. Some heartbreaks are so serious that you walk around for years with a heart like a bag of broken glass; you rattle when you walk.

Reversible Errors is marketed as a legal thriller, in the same category with amped-up murder mysteries about young lawyers in trouble. It is nothing of the sort. There is a surface resemblance, of course, but it is not substantive. Scott Turow’s novels are not about the mechanisms of the law or the similar but more mysterious mechanisms of justice. The shadowy pathways of the legal system are subordinated to the murkier pathways of the heart.

The surface of the book is about that tried-and-true staple of the legal thriller; the death penalty. Reversible Errors is informed by Scott Turow’s own experience as a member of an Illinois panel tasked to investigate inequities in that state’s system of capital punishment. The story takes place, though, in Turow’s own Kindle County, and does not directly address the issues raised in the Illinois system. This is not a screed for or against the death penalty, which is welcome.

The crime is horrible; the execution-style slaying of a restaurant owner and two customers in the small hours of the Fourth of July, 1991. The accused is Romeo “Rommy” “Squirrel” Gandolph, who is convicted largely on his own confession. Ten years later – the bulk of the story takes place in the summer of 2001, largely to avoid the impact of September 11th on the characters – Gandolph submits a half-literate plea for mercy to a federal court, claiming that he never killed anyone. The court appoints a reluctant litigator to Gandolph’s defense – which is hampered substantially by Gandolph’s mental illness and inability to help his attorneys.

The mystery of the case is quickly resolved. After a quick flashback running down the facts of the case, a dying prisoner steps forward to take credit for the crime. Ermo Erdai, dying of cancer and languishing in Rudyard prison after an assault conviction, claims that he was the killer in the Fourth of July massacre. Although his motivation for committing the crime is murky, it provides at least a reasonable doubt about Gandolph’s guilt. In a normal legal thriller, this important information would have been a big surprise, not revealed until a slack moment in the plot. Turow gives us this information early on, cementing Gandolph’s innocence in our minds. This is not an accident, or carelessness on the part of the author.

Turow is not especially concerned with how justice is to be done for Rommy Gandolph, although his plight is an important backdrop for the plot. (This is one book, by the way, that you can judge by its cover; the cover features a man and a woman reaching for each other; the condemned man is a tiny figure in the background.) The real story is the relationships of the web of characters, and how they lose and find love. A police detective and an aspiring district attorney conspire to break each other’s hearts in 1991; they are reunited ten years later after years spent in unsatisfactory marriages. Gandolph’s lawyer seeks out and woos a difficult former judge in 2001; they manage to find each other despite their own difficult pasts.

Reversible Errors reminds us of the simple and inescapable truth; hearts don’t always heal whole; you can have splinters and shards sticking out, wounding those you come in contact with. The challenge for Turow’s characters is to find someone else whose hearts have been shattered in the same way, to find love and compassion. And most of all, forgiveness.

This was another fantastic - very character-driven legal thriller.

An almost forced confession to a triple homicide lands a simple man on death row.

Far from that simple, years later -- months before the execution, new evidence surfaces by way of a confession by someone else.

Re-assembled teams from the past get together again. One to prove someone is innocent, and the other to continue to prove the right man was sentenced for the crimes.

Loved it. (And it is a 2 part mini-series with a great cast, which I may watch this weekend.)

Phillip Tomasso
Author of You Choose