Personal Injuries

Rating:
Summary: Turow at his best
Review: I liked Personal Injuries A LOT. Turow is always an interesting writer. But after putting down The Laws of Our Father unfinished, I thought I had had my fill of him. What captivated me about Personal Injuries was, one, a Clinton-esque main character Robbie Feaver, and an intriguing plot line. I cared about what happened to Feaver, I bled for his wife Rainey at the end stage of Lou Gehrig's disease, and hoped the undercover agent Evon would become more fully alive. Turow's perspective that ethical dilemmas are rarely black and white appealed to me in the post-impeachment era. This is a moving, life affirmative novel that paints a realistic picture of how law is practiced in the scrappy, workaday world. Bravo, Turow!

Rating:
Summary: Subpar listening tale - blame the audiotape or the book
Review: I checked out the abridged audiotape version of this book, and I have to say that I found it anything but riveting. I renewed it a couple of times to get all the way through. Why did I prolong the listening, because I held on to the hope that I would find this story as rewarding as Presumed Innocent. I didn't.

It was a series of poor reviews from Amazon that prompted me to listen to the audiotape rather than spend the countless hours reading a novel that would fall short. In stead I spent countless times ejecting the tape from my car radio and scanning radio stations for anything more intriguing.

The story moved along at way too slow of a pace, even on an audiotape. From reading other reviews I think this a general consensus and people just vary on their opinion of the story and characters. The tale of a crooked lawyer and the corrupt judges he colludes with is interesting, but honestly I felt like I was listening to a drawn out news report that instead of wondering what would happen next I was anxious to know when the pace would pick up. Well it did not happen.

The story while admittedly realistic doesn't draw you in to the characters. While Robbie Feaver is delved into you hardly feel like you scratch the surface of the other characters. This may be due to the narrators standpoint on centering the story around Robbie Feaver but I consider this a weak excuse. In the story the narrator George was unfamiliar with Robbie prior to this case and there seems to be little interaction between the two parties in the story that would lead to only tremendous insight on Robbie's personality.

In short I found the story disappointing, and while admittedly there could be something I missed in this abridged version I sincerely doubt it. If you have read Turow before I think this could probably be the rule of thumb (If you liked Laws of our Fathers you should give this book a chance, if not I would wait for the next one to come along). If you have never read Turow then try Presumed Innocent or Burden of Proof before you jump into this one.

Rating:
Summary: A thriller, not a mystery
Review: I really enjoyed all of Scott Turow's previous novels, but I didn't like this book anywhere near as much. The reason is that it's not a mystery, but a thriller. Mysteries have some question (who killed X? why did Y commit suicide? what happend to the 14 million dollars?) that drive the plot and keep the reader guessing. Here, you know that the judges are corrupt. What you don't know is how, or whether, our heroes will be able to get proof of it. Many thrillers hold the reader's attention by putting characters into life-and-death situations. One of the times Turow does this, you don't even realize the danger until quite a few pages later. There's a typical Turow twist at the end, but I didn't have a clue that somebody was keeping secrets until they were revealed. I finished the book, but I'd give his other books five stars, and this one only three.

Rating:
Summary: Satisfying but no humdinger!
Review: The story is simple: some tough-talking federal agents visit lawyer Robbie Feaver at his home late at night and in return for not throwing him in jail immediately (which would mean he could not be by his terminally ill wife's side during her final months) invite him to provide evidence to nail the rotten judges he's been dealing with. But wait! Robbie Feaver, we are told, is a total "slimeball" who has been bribing judges in return for favourable Personal Injuries rulings. However, the descriptions of Robbie soon show him to be almost a saint - he has a friendly wave, a smile and a few upbeat words for almost everyone; he knows everyone's story; he pays for 1 stick of gum from a blind kiosk operator while actually taking 2, but then pays for them with a $100 bill, insisting it's a $1 bill. He has a wife wasting away from a terminal illness, and uses most of his ill-gotten gains to pay for ever-increasingly expensive treatment and equipment for her. He sleeps around, but with the likes of Catholic Judge Magda Medzyk who was a virgin till she was 40 and who looks like the back of a bus. I mean, the guy practically walks on water! Meanwhile, the "good guys", the IRS and US Attorney Stan Sennet, basically blackmail Robbie into being a turncoat. Stan Sennet's righteous and implacable zeal compares oddly with Robbie's heart of a "mensch".

This is the book's strong point: the "bad guys" are Robbie and his ilk; Robbie himself is a thorougly likable and believable creation, a lovable rogue. In comparison, the "good guys" appear as simplistic zealous idiots with no hearts. In between is FBI agent Evon Miller, who is trying to find herself, and is so confused about her identity she is a basket case. She hates Robbie so much at the beginning, their relationship can only go one way.

Do the "good guys" win? Should they? By the end of the book, most of the nice "bad guys" have been ruined, for no appreciable benefits to society. Hardly a novel notion, though one not found in most betsellers, except perhaps in John Le Carre.

The weak points of the book are its slow pace (not a weakness in itself but a disappointment after the heavy-handed blurbs), the obviousness of the romantic plot and the less-than-subtle signaling of the "good" and the "bad" guys (although the reversal of the usual stereotypical roles is interesting); and finally, the narrator, whose role in the book was to me a complete mystery. Why have a narrator at all when the author is going to intrude and provide details which the narrator could never know and then clumsily try to explain this away: "Much of Robbie's day-to-day activity was observed only by the agent code-named Evon Miller, and for the sake of a full account, I have freely imagined her perspectives." The narrator could have been used to reflect or ponder on such things as the ruthlessness and heartlessness of the prosecutors - the IRS, the FBI, and the US government. Perhaps the strictly neutral "observer" is meant to highlight the ambiguity of "good" and "bad" but this is not necessary. The book would have lost nothing by ditching the narrator, and would have gained immediacy. This is poor editing.

On the whole, I found this a fairly satisfying read, although perhaps like Evon Miller, the book is searching for its identity.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant and moving character study
Review:

The phrase "It wasn't as good as Presumed Innocent" is one that has probably haunted Scott Turow since his first follow-up of that miracle of a novel. Of course, "not as good as Presumed Innocent" still leaves plenty of leeway for Turow's subsequent works to rank among the very best of modern, popular fiction.

Happily, both for existing fans as well as newcomers, we now have Personal Injuries, and let the comparisons finally cease. This latest effort stands fully on its own and reaffirms the notion that there is no such thing as a stale genre when writers like Turow are around to breathe fresh life into them.

On the surface, Personal Injuries deals with the attempt by a zealous U.S. attorney to uncover a loose but labyrinthine conspiracy among judges, attorneys and assorted court personnel to fix cases in exchange for bribes. The complex sting that evolves contains all the elements of the human tragi-comedy, including greed and deception, friendship and betrayal, high-minded ideals and vaunting ambition, and questionable means in the pursuit of unclear ends.

Amid all this complexity, however, lies the real nut of this book, and that is the effect of the evolving circumstances on the psyches of real human beings caught up in the maelstrom. The central character is an attorney who is "flipped" by the prosecutor into spying on his friends and associates. Introduced as a callous womanizer but a loyal friend to his law partner, his personality takes on variegated layers as the story proceeds. At times charitable and introspective, at other times glib and needy, we never know quite what to make of him. This is true of other characters in the book as well, and it is in this regard that Personal Injuries is a triumph of character study, a deeply probing investigation into the behaviors of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

The story is narrated in the first person from the point of view of an attorney who defends the flipped attorney. While this is an effective technique in that it adds the shading of one character filtered through another's own perceptions, it is also occasionally jarring. When the narrator has been engaging for long stretches of time in a third-person description of events removed from himself, the sudden intrusion of "I" forces us to remind ourselves who is supposed to be doing the talking and it takes a second or two to re-orient. Also somewhat disconcerting are the attorney's periodic long speeches that seem overly articulate, a tad too perceptive and too pat.

But these are minor quibbles, easily forgiven in light of the book's many towering virtues. Turow's prose is more assured and exquisitely crafted than ever, and the dialogue is wonderfully subtle, rarely handing it to the reader on a platter but requiring us instead to read between the lines, or even to read them a second and third time to divine the meaning. To be sure, the author's trademark Sting-type plot complexity is ever-present, and the surprises when they come are blissfully satisfying.

Sure is fun to watch a master improve with time.

Rating:
Summary: Slow and Sure Wins the Race!
Review: This is not a book which sets a hectic pace. It gradually unwinds along a slow and circuitous path, taking its time to get to where it's ultimately going. And in some ways (as with many good trips), it's the getting there and not the final destination that's most important.

Turow develops plot; no surprise there, since he's a mystery writer of sorts. But he also develops mood; he creates ambiance; he establishes context. And above all, he formulates character and characters. Robbie Feaver (the book's protagonist) is one of the best drawn figures that I've seen in recent literature. You just have to like (and finally admire) the guy. Lawyer or not (and I do have my problems with the legal profession), he is a strangely sympathetic man who is perhaps more moral in his own idiosyncratic way than many of the supposedly "good" people that entrap him. It is this very ethical ambiguity that gives this book the heft and feel of a John LeCarre (sorry I'm not set up for accents!) novel. Add to this carefully set literary construction a deliberative and understated prose which effectively captures nuance and subtlety, and you pass from the realm of simple story telling to the domain of literature!

Rating:
Summary: Into A Clandestine World
Review: At this very moment, somewhere in the world a hero is being born. On many a writer's computer screen this hero will stand up to the villainous forces that be, fight for all that is good and proper and inspire tumultuous applause from his/her specifically targeted readers. For those readers who actively indulge in such simplistic reverie, Scott Turow's remarkable novel is sure to disappoint. Turow is an author who goes to great lengths to establish credibility. He meticulously describes the world his characters inhabit. He describes the buildings and their history, the lawyers and their relatives, the cases and their precedents, the documents and their importance, the people and their flaws. Where a death penalty case in John Grisham's manufactured world can be marginally suspenseful, an honest conversation between two real people in Turow's is riveting.

Of the many faces that pass through Personal Injuries, several emerge to the foreground. The foremost is Robbie Feaver, a personal injuries lawyer who is corrupt to the bone in his practice, a cheater and a liar with something to say about everything. As compromised as he is from a legal standpoint, in his own mind and in his own way he has always been loyal to the ones he loves. One of the novel's many pleasure is observing Feaver's mind at work. He is a man who will tell a dozen lies inorder to make a point he genuinely believes in. To him, every action he takes is part of a "play", a scheme from which and his "friends" would profit. So when you witness him tracking down a case to the hospital where he sits by the grieving family of a recently deceased woman and sheds real tears, you can't help but feel shocked at how audaciously manipulative this man is. Later when he explains that his tears where indeed real, you realise that the most adamant believer of Robbie Feaver's lies is Robbie Feaver. As one character observes about him "He may be a fake, but he is a genuine fake." Like so many who fall foul of the law Robbie Feaver is, at heart, a good man.

As clever as he is, Robbie Feaver is not a calculating man. We come to understand that his prosperity is due more to his connections, friends, numerous lovers and his general affable nature more then any masterplan he may have concieved. A careless mistake finally lands the U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett and the IRS at his door. They have discovered a bank account where he keeps the bribe money destined to go to a ring of corrupt judges. The U.S. Attorney offers him a deal; if he were to wear a wire on these judges, and then testify against them in court, the government would grant him immunity from prosecution. He accepts. In Feaver's world, there is nothing lower then a rat. And Turow makes it abundantly clear that Feaver would have chosen prison if it weren't for his wife's affliction with the cruelest of diseases, ALS.

Robbie Feaver, with his unique idiosyncratic rhythms and collapsing house of cards would have been enough for an entire novel, but Turow has three more aces up his sleeve. The first is the character of Stan Sennett. The U.S. Attorney movingly recounts how his greek immigrant ancestor let thugs destroy his business "because he couldn't buy a judge". It is clear that this a driven and righteous man, but in his relentless drive to apprehend all who is corrupt, there are signs of an overinflated ego, a lust for power and even a streak of sadism. Aside from the obvious theme of power corrrupting the powerful, Turow's point is that organisations which oppose each other tend, over time, to become alike. As the elaborate sting operation presses ahead, the government's tactics are often more decpetive and sometimes more brutal then that of their opponents.

Next up is Evon Miller, an undercover agent assigned to accompany Robbie while posing as his paralegal. In a novel of exceptionally drawn characters, hers is perhaps the most sympathetic. Her problems are not legal in nature, but just as complex as those of the man she is assigned to watch. In a certain light, her growing friendship with Feaver could be her biggest problem. Their conversations, or more accurately, their duels take on a life of their own and are also among the novel's many pleasures.

In the background there is Brendan Tuohey the Presiding Judge of The Common Law Claims Division where all the personal injury cases are heard. More importantly he resides over the secret society of corrupt judges whose alliances are fierce and ancient. His character remains largely an enigma, which is by no means a result of an author's attempt to create a more mysterious villian, but largely due to Tuohey's own paranoia. Too add fuel to the fire, Tuohey is a relative of sorts of Rbbie Feaver.

The novel is narrated in first person by George Mason who is Robbie Feaver's attorney. Browsing through the reviews here on Amazon I noticed many complaints about this, most cited that Mason was not there when many of these conversations(Particularly those between Evon and Robbie) took place. While I recognise that this is legitimate complaint, I would argue that this approach is Turow's masterstroke. You see, Turow's alternatives were A)A first person narration from Feaver's point of view, in which case all prespective of the law would have been lost, and the novel would have been primarly a character study. B) A third person narrative whereby the an omniscient author adopts a God's point of view. While this may have quickened the pace, it will also make the events all the more fictious. And although Personal Injuries is fiction, set in a non-exitant county, it is by far the most detailed legal novel I've ever read.

In writing Personal Injuries Turow has created a labyrinthine drama that asks big questions like: Do the ends justify the means? Can man made justice really be objective? It is a novel that recognises that the sum of the facts never amounts to the Truth. And beneath all the legals philosophy it is a brilliant and observant character study. Look at its title: Personal Injuries, most will associate that title with ambulance chasing lawyers, but here it refers to the a condition many of these characters bring on to themselves. It does not refer to a type of Law practice.

Rating:
Summary: incredibly detailed, almost too much at times
Review: I agree with other reviewers who said this is slow going. Don't expect a thriller that takes 2 hours to read. I've been slogging away for days, although overall I enjoyed it. Not since Shuuuuhman McCoy (Bonfire of the Vanities) have I read such a memorable portrait of a flawed main character. My favorite part of the book was Turow's incredible creation of Robbie Feaver. At times you'll hate him, at times you'll sympathize with him. His absolute egoism combined with his sensivity and personal values make him fascinating as a character study.

Turow provides such a detailed legal background that it almost overwhelms the reader. I can't help but think this book would have been stronger if it were a tad less overburdened by realistic details. Still, Turow does all his research and gives many readers a feel for the cruelest disease, ALS. The other villains and heroes are all interesting creations and well described. If you like intricate legal books, you won't be able to put this one down. You'll need to carry it around for awhile though to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Turow's Second Best - not High Octane but enjoyable.
Review: Let's face it, Turow is never likely to write another"Presumed Innocent". His subsequent efforts have been left in its shadow and were less than memorable. All I knew about this one was that it was meant to be a return to form - and partially it is. This is a slow, slightly ponderous account of an undercover operation into corruption. On the plus side it avoids the over-the-top melodrama that delivers cheap thrills.Tension can still be generated from lower key situations. When the book finally succumbs to a dramatic ending it is both obvious and annoying. On the whole this book desrves neither the abuse nor raves from its polarised readers.

Rating:
Summary: Super
Review: Personal Injuries Scott Turow Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishers, 1999 ISBN 0374281947 H.C. Mystery/Thriller

A gripping, suspenseful book about corruption,deciet and love.

Robbie Feaver is a personal Injury lawyer with a very good reputation, that is until U.S.Attonery Stan Sennett uncovers Feaver's dirty secret. Feaver has been bribing judges in the Common Law Claims Division to win favorable judgments. Now Sennett wants to use Feaver to go undercover to get the guy at the top. The character of Robbie Feaver is a likable con- artist with a big heart. There are other characters in the book that are just as well written as Feaver, like agent Evon Miller who becomes very close to Feaver even though he is married to someone that he loves very much. Raimey his wife has Lou Gehrigs disease and is dying. You feel the attraction of Robbie and Evon right through the pages of the book. There is also Justice Brendan Tuohey, all of their lives become the mystery at the core of the book, there are alot of surprises in this book.

Personal Injuries is a legal thriller at it's best.But than again that's Mr. Turow's style. All of Mr. Turow's books have been International Best Sellers.