The Laws of Our Fathers

Rating:
Summary: Plodding, ridiculous, uninteresting, unreadable.
Review: After plodding through the gibberish of the first chapter, I was astonished about the confusing and unintersesting pages that followed. Is this really the same author of the previous books

Rating:
Summary: Not the same Scott
Review: I also, like previous reviews, found this book slow, and very hard to get into. I think the flashback portions of this book are much better than the trial going on itself. I am 3/4 of the way through it and I find it very hard to go back to. Not near as exciting and rivetting as his other books. But keep on writing, the excitement will come back I hope.

Rating:
Summary: What the heck was that all about?
Review: I've read all his books, and this was a major disappointment. I got the feeling he was trying to say something, like look what we were like in the 60's and look how far we've come. And? It would have been more effective as two books, one about the 60's and one about a murder in the 90's. It just sort of petered out at the end. Such bad food and such large portions.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: This book is confusing, slow, hard to pick up and in need of a good rewrite if not total trashing. The story constantly jumps back and forth in a very confusing manner. The narrator changes, sometimes confusing the author as he forgets who is supposed to be telling parts. It is not worth reading

Rating:
Summary: Is there a way to give a book a minus number?
Review: Read his other books.This one is boriiiiing.Don't see the movie! Don't buy the paperback

Rating:
Summary: A great book;Turow's best, you won't be able to put it down.
Review: I bought this looking for a courtroom thriller. It's that and a lot more. The eternal conflict between generations, the antiwar idealism of the 1970's gone awry, and the burdens and opportunities of our heritage combine to create a story that is both suspenseful and insightful. The characters you remember from Turow's earlier books - Sonya Klonsky, Sandy Stearn, Tommy Molto, and Raymond Horgan - are back, but older and wiser. The story starts as just another senseless gang shooting of an innocent bystander. But then, the son of a prominent politician is accused of plotting to murder his own father. This draws out the past of everyone, and puts them in a new light. Those of us who grew up in those times should read this book to remember the past. Those who haven't should read this book to understand the rest of us. Bill Lipton

Rating:
Summary: A tedious read with a limp finish.
Review: If our gallant author wished to rehash the drug induced sixties, why did he distort the story with an unbelievable and childishly tangled murder plot?

Rating:
Summary: Why is bigger always assumed to be better?
Review: Wordy and digressive, I found this book both over-written and tedious reading. It lacks the focus of Turow's earlier books, seems an exercise in self-indulgence, much like The Big Chill

Rating:
Summary: Tedious, bloated baby-boomer pap
Review: Boring lives of boring self-infatuated navel gazers in the Sixties and the Nineties. Over the 30-year span they got even less interesting and more tedious. Full of whining, cringing self-justification. If you met these characters at a cocktail party you would flee. Skip this turkey and buy one of Turow's earlier works

Rating:
Summary: Superb! A fascinating character study clothed as a mystery
Review: Turow's sentences draw pictures for the reader to savor;his characters are richly and fully drawn; the story--really two stories melded into one--is compelling. While Turowuses the genre of a murder mystery to tell his story,Turow's story is more about strength and weakness,morality and immorality, perception and reality--and howthose things change over time. Once again Turow has written a popular novel with big words. It is a story told in the present and the past and told fromthe perspective of two likeable (a new feature in a Turownovel) characters who share(d) those time periods. Told,where appropriate, in the vernacular of the mean streetsof Kindle County, the criminal justice system of the '90's,and the anti-establishment radical fringe of the '60's, thisbook is not an easy read. It is, however, and unlike mostof its genre, a worthwhile read. While I wouldnot recommend a novel this interesting or this complexto a casual reader looking for simple-minded page turner,I strongly recommend this novel to any thoughtful readerwilling to invest the intellectual capital to work throughgood literature