I know Robbie Feaver.

Maybe you do, too — if you’re lucky.

In my opinion, Robbie is among the most brilliantly — and lovingly — created characters in fiction.

Robbie is a lawyer, a nice Jewish boy, handsome, sexy, funny, and a complex human being.

“You could never count on him for honesty, assuming he even knew what it was. He was unruly and incorrigible. But if she stumbled, he’d come running. She couldn’t even say for sure she’d be able to reach out when he extended a hand. But he’d be there. she wasn’t going to forgive him, really. But she had to stop pretending with herself. Nine hundred people had just turned out, all there to buoy Robbie Feaver in his grief, nearly every one a friend who’d experienced his openness and the soothing warmth of his care. And she was one, too. You couldn’t fight facts.”

There have been at least two Robbie Feavers in my life, and as much as I love men, I loved these two most of all. It was an extraordinary delight to find such a beloved character in a novel.

Robbie shows us what love truly is — unconditional love, the kind of love you would be both blessed and unlikely to find in your lifetime. The man is deeply flawed: dishonest, irresponsible, undependable. Unfaithful, yet faithful: he strays, but always comes back to you.

In PERSONAL INJURIES, Mr. Turow tests Robbie Feaver (pronounce it “favor”) beyond all limits of physical and emotional endurance. Robbie’s wife has a fatal illness. She is slowly dying throughout the novel. The course of her illness is graphic and heartbreaking. The strength of courage of this woman and her husband are beyond the meaning of courage and strength.

In PERSONAL INJURIES, Mr. Turow explores love in all its forms: Robbie and his wife, Robbie and a lesbian woman, Robbie and his law partner and lifelong friend, Mort Dinnerstein.

“There is deep feeling between these men,” one of the lawyers says, though Robbie and Mort are not homosexual.

In PERSONAL INJURIES, love transcends sex.

Scott Turow is a brilliant writer. He unfailingly delivers a great story, a roller coaster ride, and a page-turning cliffhanger. Sometimes the writing bogs down just a little bit. Forget and forgive that. The book is superb.

And don’t pigeonhole this author as a “genre writer” of law thrillers. He is far, far better than that and getting better all the time. PRESUMED INNOCENT is a great read, and in the opinion of many reviewers, his best book. But I think his skill with characterization—making his characters real and complex and exciting for us—is, in PERSONAL INJURIES, superior to his other works.


Arlene Sanders
Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia
www.ArleneSanders.com

While the story was fine, what really made this audio book sing was the narration by the late Ken Howard.

To me, a few audiobook narrations stand out. Jim Dale's of the Harry Potter books. Bernadette Dunne's in The Secret Agent. Almost anything by George Guidall.

Howard narrated the story so artfully, that later I sought out a book he had written, Act Natural, to learn whether he shared anything usefule on using your voice.

Another excellent book. Scott Turow is the master inside the courtroom and outside. This book is slightly different as most of the activities in this book revolved outside the courtroom. The ending is sad but a very likely ending. Corruption in the courtroom shouldn't be surprising....look around you, in the judicial nominees across the country including the supreme court. We have 2 supreme court judges who have been charged with sexual misconduct however continue to hold the office. It is a shame and the author is only calling it out in his own way through this story. excellent book.

it didn’t portray the characters in a way I appreciated

I am familiar with Scott Turow’s older work and enjoyed it immensely. This book is written well, especially the complicated nature of some of the characters.

But I was unhappy with two things about half way through so decided to stop reading. 1. “The Mormon” character did not strike me as like a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in my experience. Two, the use of sex in people’s life was so flippant, and attempted to be excused by being kind to others to give them a moment of feeling good.
I was sorry to see these two problems in a Scott Turow novel.

I very much enjoyed this novel. Turow is a great writer. His characters are three dimensional, filled with contradictions, doubts, yet also redeeming qualities. They trace an arc through the course of the narrative and emerge as people whose experiences as chronicled by Turow change them.
As a lawyer and retired judge, I enjoy courtroom dramas and Turow has never disappointed. Here he mixes trial/investigation strategy with the exploitation of human greed and frailty. He demonstrates the power of ambition to wreak havoc in peoples’ lives. It’s a great story on several levels.

Never read a book by this guy, and don't really read legal thrillers at all. Still, I think Turow has a real knack for character building and even the side characters are all fleshed out enough to be interesting. The plot itself is a little much, but I stuck around just to see the interactions between the players. I listened to the audiobook which was brilliantly narrated and overall I found it quite enjoyable.

I can't believe this book got published, not due to the content or story, but because of the ignorance of basic grammar rules. Let's begin with characters, the ESSENTIAL makeup of a novel. A competent author makes characters easy to follow as they mature through the story. This book doesn’t do that at all.
One of my biggest pet peeves in this book is the alternating of character names. It got real confusing and was knawing me on the inside. Here's an example of a single character being referred to by his first name and last name in the same sentence. "For all his lapses and deceptions, Robbie was committed to Morty's well-being, and Dinnerstein knew it." Mort Dinnerstein is one character. Stop using both first and last names interchangeably. It seems like you're talking about two people but you aren't.
It doesn't help that there are a lot of characters. In any book, once you reach the last couple of chapters you should have an easy understanding on who is who. In Personal Injuries' final few chapters, I had no idea who the fuck was who. My brain can only handle so much, not two dozen characters who are referenced by their first, last, and sometimes even their sobriquet names. Some of them have not been seen since the beginning of the book. Mr. Turow throws in “extras” into the cast during the conclusion. These are very minor characters who are significantly unimportant to the overall story. For example, someone's lawyer or the mayor of the city. I had to look up that last one because I did not recognize the name and it turned out he is the mayor of the fictional city. I understand long time readers of the series might chuckle as they remember these guys, but for a first book it is too much especially if they have no part of the story whatsoever.
I really wish there was a playbill of characters in the beginning pages. I wrote down one myself, but then stopped after six or so characters with minor descriptions. Afterwards it was websites that provided me with descriptions. These websites are maintained by devoted fans. I appreciated their organization because this novel was such an unorganized mess!
Another major grammatical error is in the transitions. The transitions flowed haphazardly from past to present and not in a good way. At the height of the book when Feaver is showing his former friend that he is wired and he recorded the transaction for the federal government, Mr. Turow bounces back to earlier in the day. Literally I was fast forwarding this part, WE ARE AT THE BEGINNING STAGES OF THE CLIMAX AND WE ARE GOING BACK TO BEFORE? This was a terrible transition and spoiled the moment for me.
The action parts were ruined with jumps between the present and the future. Like I'm in the middle of an escalation and then there's a sentence about how the character felt later in the night. Ruins the suspense of not knowing what was going to happen, especially since the targets are high ranking people with connections. Here is an example of such a disappointment, I capitalized the frustrating time-shift text.

"He'd struck Tuohey dumb with that, much as intended. A victor of kinds, Feaver sprinted the twenty or so yards to Skolnick's Lincoln in a metered space at the curb. Klecker had not recovered the key from him, and Robbie slid inside. HE WAS NOT THINKING ABOUT MUCH, HE TOLD ME LATER, BESIDES GETTING OUT OF THE COLD AND TURNING ON THE HEATER FULL BLAST.
Evon approached Klecker on the other side of the fountain. 'Whoa,' Alf suddenly said. Wheeling, she caught sight of Tuohey, hiking rapidly back toward Robbie and the Lincoln. She began running, but Tuohey was already motioning for Robbie to roll down the window.

This quote also points out another major complaint. Reading this quote as a whole it sounds like it's from one person. In reality, it is from two different characters' points of view. Asides from a new paragraph there's nothing to indicate that you are reading from a different character's perspective. I thought it was from one person since there was no indication of a character change. If an indication was included, the book would have been SO MUCH easier to read. There are sections where I had to reread them to figure out which character witnessed a major plot twist (a ploy by Feaver). Going back to previous chapters to find out which character witnessed something is not that fun.
If this book didn't have interesting plot-twists, then I would have not finished it. It was nice to see how much the world has changed since 1999. This novel was written Pre-9/11 and some parts stuck out on how much the world has changed. "Federal law provides that before the government records anybody, there must be either an interception order, signed by a judge, or consent by one party to the conversation." The PATRIOT ACT changed this. In addition, I enjoyed the false court cases presented in front of the judges to decide on (along with the bribe). These pretend cases remind me of a scheme which Saul Goodman would concoct. The novel also positively details the loneliness that an undercover lifestyle brings. Especially if you are spending 15+ hours daily with the informant, it's only human nature that desire can arise. However holding yourself to professionalism can bring can torment you. Go ahead girl, it allright to do it while thinking about human contact. I've been there and done that.
This output is a shame because there were at least two points in the book where references from previous novels were mentioned. I would be up to read the novels but am afraid that since they are previous ones, they will be even worse grammatically.
Turning to the final page of the book, there is an advertisement from the publisher. Looking at who the publishing company is puts the nail on the coffin on why such an obstrosity was published in the first place. Time Warner published it in 1999, the time period when they were in negotiations to merge with AOL. This merger led to AOL-Time Warner, who would soon kill WCW. Bewarned literate wrestling fans if you want to read this book, you will end up like WCW.
Final Rating: 20%
PARTS of the story were interesting and kept me on my toes. However transitional issues and jumbling of characters name disengaged me from further enjoyment

This is a story of depressing incidents, one after another, unrelenting ... the backdrop of judicial corruption in personal injury cases is frighteningly believable ... the cases are all about big money and rarely about crime, except for the crimes of judges who demand bribes and attorneys who pay them

And yet, it seems that each such incident also generates a sense of feeling and caring and sometimes love ... even among the slimeballs you are invited to despise

Audiobook Review
4 3/4 Stars

This novel is perhaps Turow's greatest piece of fiction of his entire collection.

It's not a legal courtroom drama. It is the story of Robbie Feaver, a high-end ambulance chaser, who is caught in a bribery scheme that includes all the Judges and their minions in Kindle County. Robbie reluctantly agrees to flip on the Judges and work with the FBI. His motives are relatively simple -- he wants to protect his long-time partner Mort and his wife Lorraine, who is dying of ALS.

Told from the point of view of Robbie's lawyer, who is only a bit player in the character lineup, Robbie, with all his flaws and faults, a man who wanted to be a theatrical performer becomes a true star.

In this wonderful saga, so unlike Grisham's recent pablum, we fall in love with the characters. Our minds and hearts move with them, break for them, fear for them. Turow's prosaic approach to weaving this complex story line with compelling dialogue is a real winner.

Don't miss it.

In a word, boring. Long passages where the action doesn't advance makes for tedious reading. In addition, the point of view keeps switching from first person to third person, which I find annoying. By 150 pages in, I didn't care anymore. It was close to being wall-banged. I only finished it because I didn't have anything else to read.

In this 1999 legal thriller by Scott Turow, main character personal injury lawyer Robbie Feavor cooperates with the FBI to uncover and root out corruption in the Kindle County legal system. Much of the story focuses on the undercover work of Feavor as he works with FBI agent Evon Miller to record and document patterns of bribery for legal favors and decisions. The legal narrative is quite interesting to an outsider but Turow's characters also always develop interesting relationships. One major story line is Feavor's care of his wife with progressive ALS. I was glad I found this older Turow story that I hadn't read yet.

It was okay. I didn't feel like any of the characters particularly endeared themselves to me, and I thought the whole "Didi's a lesbian" side-story was underdeveloped and just sorta thrown in in an attempt to make the story more provocative (which it didn't succeed in doing).
Also kinda sad that the guy you don't want to die, does, while the guy you do want to die, doesn't (until his gratuitous boating-accident death in a classic "try to fix the entire plot in the epilogue" maneuver).