The law of Our Fathers has many great scenes and shows how Turow matured as a writer at the time this book was published in 1996. However, no matter how great many parts of the book are, it suffers from sections that are dull, tangential to the central stories, and in need of the editor's scissors.

In The Law of Our Fathers, Turow manages to tell two stories involving the same characters but separated by a time span of about twenty-five years. The initial story involves the murder of a prominent state senator's wife in a drive-by shooting. The woman's son is arrested for the murder, the claim being that he hired a leading member of a gang to arrange the kill on his father. When his mother showed up in the father's place, the arranged hit went on as planned.

The case ends up on the docket of Judge Sonia Klonsky who hears the case without a jury when the parties consent to that arrangement. Klonsky's involvement in the case is unorthodox, particularly because she knew the defendant, his father, and the defense attorney in her earlier life.

However, the book moves back to Klonsky's time in California when she knew these people as well as Seth Weissman, her boyfriend and lover who is attending the trial as a journalist and personal friend of the defendant. Klonsky soon learns that Weissman is intent on renewing their relationship with her.

The third story deals with Weissman's rocky relationship with his father, a survivor from the Holocaust. This is juxtaposed against Klonsky's relationship with her activist mother and the defendant's relationship with his father, the state senator.

All of these stories weave in and out of the book, usually effectively, but occasionally awkwardly. The book is ambitious for all of its plots and subplots and its themes. I believe it would have been a better work if it had been more focused-- sparing the reader about 100 pages of this sometimes rambling 550-page book.

I was very disappointed with this book. It started out pretty good, a standard legal thriller. The story got bogged down in the flashbacks. They went on way too long. The backstory of the characters made it clear that the Judge in the book made a very obviously wrong decision right at the beginning--which would have been ok for dramatic purposes--if it had been at all plausible, but it wasn't. The decision and her weak reasons for it were so wrong that I was no longer able to suspend disbelief.

Once I lost interest in the plausibility of the story, the continual flashbacks became more and more tedious. Turow's prose is overly flowery to the point where by the time I got through the long strings of adjectives describing every minute detail, I forgot who or what he was writing about. (and in many cases, no longer cared)

The book is just way too long and the twist ending is weak and confusing. By far the worst of Turow's efforts.

he Laws of Our Fathers is different than Turow's previous novels. It is a story about our legal system, but it is more of an exploration of the sixties and events that sculpted a generation. The story moves back and forth between the past and present day murder trial, with usual twists that make us appreciate Turow's skill.

Sonia Klonsky, whom we met in The Burden of Proof, is a newcomer to the Superior Court bench. She is charged with deciding the outcome of a murder trial in which Nile Eddgar, a probation officer, is charged with arranging the drive-by shooting of his mother. The scene with the Black Saints Disciples is unforgettable. By weaving the tale of the lives of Sonia with the murder victim and a few in the courtroom, Turow offhandedly compares the experience of the two generations.

In some ways, I enjoyed this book better than his last two because it goes deeper than being just another legal drama, getting at societal issues as well.

If this book was 100 pages shorter, it'd be a 4-5 star rating for me. I'm a child of the 70s/80s. I've heard all about the 60s and the Vietnam War for my entire life. So, for almost half of this book to be dedicated to that time period wasn't that interesting for me. I've heard enough. But, more than that, that section of the book just didn't feel compelling until about 4/5 of the way through. I know you've got to have the back story of these characters for it to work, but I just wanted less. The 'present day' trial and lives of the people were much more interesting to me. And the culmination of the trial was terrific! That did however leave around 80 pages of further explanation and resolution, which I thought was too much. Turow is a great writer. I've loved his other books. So this isn't going to dissuade me from reading more books he's written. Especially since I did love half of this book. The flashbacks just didn't do it for me.

YAY!! THIS BOOK IS FINALLY OVER. THANK GOODNESS. I have been drowning in this book for weeks and am so relieved it is over. Yes, I could have just stopped reading it, but I had also already committed so much time to it too so I wanted to still finish it.

I just could not get into this book or Scott Turow’s writing. Yes, it was a legal “thriller,” but there was nothing thrilling about it. I didn’t find myself at the edge of my seat waiting to know what was next. I didn’t find myself unable to put this book now. It felt like reading one of my law school textbooks at tome.

Sure, the ending explaining that Nile was really running drugs for Hardcore was interesting but nothing that shook me to my core. Also, Eddgar and Seth’s history — still isn’t clear to me why Seth hated Eddgar so much. Also, the “kidnapping” of Seth who then became Michael Frain still felt very convoluted to me, even after 500+ pages of the book.

I appreciated Scott Turow jumping between decades to provide various history especially around the protests and complicated feelings concerning the Vietnam War. Yet, it didn’t really flow to me. There were times where I felt like the flashbacks just really weren’t that relevant to the current story. Yes, I know Sonny, Seth, Hobie, Nile, and Eddgar all had a history together, and they all reconnected during Nile’s trial. Yes, I know all of their relationships were extremely interconnected and woven with each other. But the history still really didn’t add that much for me? Maybe I just wasn’t appreciating it? Who knows, just not for me.

More like 3.5. Turow writes well, he had a good story-too much introspective, repetitive belly gazing for me.

Scott Turow's debut novel, Presumed Innocent, is one of my favorite books. It virtually created the legal-thriller genre later occupied by John Grisham, and in my view is one of the signature novels of the 1980s, along with Bright Lights, Big City, Bonfire of the Vanities, and a few others. Turow has been called the thinking man's John Grisham, but in light of Turow's priority of publication, perhaps Grisham should be described as the non-thinking man's Scott Turow.

The Laws of Our Fathers is not up to the high standard set by Presumed Innocent. The writing is brisk. It is a difficult task to make an 817-page novel into a page-turner, but Turow accomplished that task here. However, The Laws of Our Fathers lacks some of the depth of Presumed Innocent.

In Presumed Innocent, the action seems to unfold naturally. Every character has things he or she would like to hide - weaknesses, fears, immoral acts, and in some cases outright crimes they have committed. It makes for a good neo-noirish tone, and provides universality to the story.

In contrast, the main characters are all of a specific type - ex-hippies, yippies, and draft dodgers from privileged backgrounds who have assumed positions of power in the legal and political system. They express some skepticism about the destruction wrought by their "revolution," both through bombings and riots in the late 1960s, as well as social destruction hastened along by the disastrous social/welfare policies emanating from that time. At the same time, they still are living for the most part in a bubble where everyone agrees with the basic assumptions of 1960s radicals and questions are not asked. They have not yet been "mugged by reality," and seem largely impervious to the concerns and common sense of ordinary people.

One gets the sense that these are the types of people with whom the author normally associates. This focus may make the book seem more visceral to ex-flower children who still are tying to sort out what the 1960s meant. However, it results in a lot of navel-gazing, and reduces the book's impact for the rest of us. On the whole, The Laws of Our Fathers is a good, but certainly not a great, novel.

I also should note that as a trial lawyer myself, I especially enjoyed the courtroom scenes. When I was in law school, L.A. Law was on tv. In a way, it provided a good weekly pop quiz on evidence and procedure. Almost nothing the L.A. lawyers did in court would have been allowed in a real courtroom, and thinking about why provided good practice in the application of the rules. Turow doesn't rely on such crutches, and instead uses actual courtroom rules, as well as the verbal stutters and failures of memory which inevitably creep into almost every trial, to build tension. It also gets one thinking about trial tactics and procedure, but in a more positive way.

I wasn't sure what to think of this at first because there was so much street language - hard to hear and comprehend with every other word being an F bomb. But I appreciated it more as it went on. The characters were honed so carefully. It was an interesting concoction of philosophy, religion, and racial justice, wrapped around engaging characters.

Lots of characters to keep track of, lots of flipping back and forth between characters and time periods. A lot to keep track of. Quite a long book. Probably wouldn't appeal much to someone who didn't live through the 1960s.

Street gang dialect is distracting and probably unnecessary.

really two books

I was looking forward to a good court drama and thought I was going to get it. Then the book swung back to the late sixties and we ended up with a load of information relating to the current characters, almost Americana which is just not my bag. Then to add insult to injury the promising case ended abruptly with a mistrial. I like Scott Turow but this was a huge disappointment.

I normally like this author's books, but this book was just plain boring. Slow moving with characters that weren't particularly likable. I just couldn't get through it. I abandoned the book about halfway through. I am not sure I will read anymore of the books in this series after the disappointment of this one

Luckily for me, this was not the first Scott Turow book I read. If it had been, I would never have read any more of his books. After Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof, this book was such a let-down.