PRESUMED INNOCENT

Rating:
Summary: Good enough to make me want to read Turow instead of Grisham
Review: If you like murder mysteries or legal thrillers or have ever read a Grisham book all the way through, you ought to read this book. In my opinion, it's clearly better than the Grisham books I've read, which makes me wonder why Turow is not as big as Grisham. Well, for whatever reason, this book is good enough to convince me to look for more Turow books and to encourage you to read this one. The story is very well constructed, the writing appealing and the characters interesting. Plenty of surprises and enjoyment.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Read
Review: This book is outstanding! I've read a couple of Grisham's novels before having this one recommended to me. This is in a much higher class of literature. Turow weaves an extremely well written story of crime, politics, relationships and soul-searching into a legal mystery. Once I got the main characters down and the plot (which doesn't take too long) I didn't want to stop reading until finished. I won't give away the ending - that would be unfortunate for someone who hasn't read it. All I can say is that I highly recommend this novel!

Rating:
Summary: Great legal thriller/mystery
Review: Scott Turow weaves a complex and suspenseful legal drama and murder mystery, and then bashes you over the head with an eerie ending.

If you think you like Grisham, then do yourself a favor and read an author who can actually write.

Read this book.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT - BUT DON'T READ REVIEWS THAT REVEAL ENDING
Review: If you've just discovered "Presume Innocent" - don't read any reviews, don't see the movie, just get the book and read it. This is a marvelous murder mystery, written with precision and intelligence, yet so reader friendly. I bought this book to read on a four-hour bus ride to visit my Dad and Step-mother for the weekend; I was so rude that weekend because I just could not put this book down. Scott Turow peals away this story layer by layer and the surprises just never stop. I'm 60 and quite a reader - and this is one of the five best books I've ever read. But DON'T READ REVIEWS THAT REVEAL THE ENDING - or you will miss a moment that just knocks you on your behind.

Rating:
Summary: The best legal thriller (of many) that I've ever read...
Review: John Grisham pales in comparison, even at his finest, to Scott Turow's _Presumed Innocent_. Many times, even in great books, there are secondary plots or tangential storylines that one must bear in order to get to the good parts, to the main story. Not in this book; every line left me eager for the next. I've never been so captivated by a book, so clueless as to where the book was going, and anxious to see how it ended...an amazing mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Convicting prose....
Review: Rusty Sabich is a loving father and husband, the No.2 prosecuting attorney in a large mid-western city (the fictional Kindle County now famous in Turow's other books), and the man considered hardest to beat were he given the chance to run for the top spot. He is also emotionally crippled by a loveless childhood, a career spent in the shadow of his boss, Ray Horgan and a marriage all but mortally wounded by Sabich's fling with Carolyn Polhemus, an up and coming prosecutor who uses and discards men. Carolyn's brutal murder, coming critical days before Ray Horgan's latest re-election campaign, electrifies Kindle county. For Sabich, the problems are deeper. His affair with Carolyn already brought to a painful end, Sabich's assignment to crack the case only raises more cruel memories. But, when clues begin pointing directly at Sabich, the prosecutor's problems are clearly only beginning and Sabich faces the prosecutor's other nightmare - to become the target of the very same apparatus that he has long mastered, the Kindle County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Forced to rely on a formidible professional rival - the courtly Alejandro "Sandy" Stern, and now facing as bitter enemies his ex-colleagues, Sabich's life is turned upside-down.

"Presumed Innocent" is actually several novels - Sabich's trial being only one. Rather than rely on inelegant prose, Turow also crafts a nuanced study of Sabich's charachter, creating a hollow adult capable of prosecuting cases of unspeakable crimes yet brought to the edge of ruin by the callous disregard of a cruel woman. But most of all, "Innocent" is also the story of Kindle County, of crooked and vindictive cops and judges, of the "Night Saints", of litigating attorneys who use the courts to boost their prestige, of the hacks, the ambitious, the overzealous and the cruel. In delicate prose, Turow lays out his story and his rogue's gallery of charachters, but manages almsot never to become judgemental. Even Ray Horgan's betrayal of Sabich seems a perfectly human response to perceived betrayals by Rusty. In the end, there doesn't seem to be a charachter that hasn't faced some kind of prosecution between the lines.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: A clasic suspense-thriller! This book will keep you guessing and flipping the pages as you become entranced by Turow's magnetic prose.

Rating:
Summary: Turow's Best
Review: Who killed Carolyn? That is the question that unravels the life and career of her seceret lover, Rusty Sabich. A gripping page-turner, with lots of plot twists make this book a very entertaining read. Much better than the movie version.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Yet
Review: In my opinion this is the best legal thriller yet written. The power and tension of this work is translated onto each page with something that I can only describe as desperate enthusiasm.

The characters are real and touching, even the ones you will come to hate are human and vivid. The storyline never stops moving and never once disappoints.

Turow takes us into the minds of people wo would like to know or love to hate, moves us through a dismal midwestern autumn and winter like few authors can and delivers the literary punch to keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

Don't be satisfied with having seen the movie, read Presumed Innocent.

Rating:
Summary: Inside the mind of "Lusty Rusty". . .
Review: . . .it's obvious he still can't get Carolyn out of his mind, even though she's now dead and he's the prime suspect in her murder. But as the murder trial begins, more secrets, motives, and pain surface; each one makes you wonder anew: did he or didn't he? We see the ripples all this makes in Rusty's career (ironically, he's a prosecuting lawyer) and his marriage to a math professor who is as brilliant a scholar as Carolyn was a lawyer. When the murder was solved, though, I found myself wondering: did it happen the way a character said it did, or was it how a defense attorney would spin it out to get a client acquitted?

Since others have mentioned the movie here, I will too. When I first read this book, I pictured Ellen Barkin as Carolyn. She has sizzled on-screen in everything she's ever played. The producers blew it by not getting her. Every other part was perfectly cast. They needed a hot mama, not a cool kitten, to make the character believable. Oh, well. This book was easy to pick up and hard to put down, as they used to say. Enjoy. . .