Rating: 
Summary: Better Left Unread
Review: I consider Scott Turow to be the best legal fiction writer currently on the market. He has a much superior mastery of the craft of writing over his contemporaries (i.e. Grisham, Baldacci). Typically his stories are suspenseful, believable, and to say the very least, interesting.
"The Laws of Our Fathers" was a departure from that formula, and perhaps Turow's intent was to branch out, but I didn't care so much for this branch.
The characters were melodramatic, their behavior and dialogue often unbelievable and annoying. The flahsbacks to the 60s were unwelcome and frequent breaks in what I considered the story's only redeeming quality--the plight of the young African-American man on trial and the judge's developing conflict of interest.
Bottom line: an anomoly in an otherwise stellar writing career.
Rating: 
Summary: A very ambitious novel.
Review: The complex story is told in two alternating tracks, with the first set in a lightly fictionalized late 60's Berkeley, and the second set in Turow's present-day Kindle County. The main character, Sonny, finds herself the judge of a murder trial involving people she has known for twenty years, and must decide it without the assistance of a jury.
This book is very long and complex. You will need patiences for a story to get to the point. But, Turow writes extremely well and ranges widely, taking on gang culture, judicial corruption, and the ever present political manipulations. And he always has very interesting character at the center of his tale. I would suggest this not be the first Turow book you read.
Rating: 
Summary: Gang killing with 60s roots
Review: Turow's 1996 thriller begins with a reader's eye-witness view of the drive-by gang murder of a middle-aged white woman. A few days later the woman's son, Nile Eddgar, the gang leader's probation officer, is arrested for conspiracy to murder.
Sonny Klonsky (from 'Burden of Proof'), the judge in Niles' trial, knew the victim 25 years earlier when she and Loyell Eddgar (now a state senator) were college radicals and their son was a confused little boy. Sonny's misgivings deepen when she realizes the defense lawyer, Hobie Tuttle, is another denizen from that turbulent past - a Black Panthers disciple and friend of her then boyfriend, Seth Weissman. Weissman, now a successful syndicated columnist, is also in town and quickly renews his acquaintance with Sonny.
The narrative alternates between Sonny and the trial and Seth's recollections of 60's turmoil. Turow skillfully weaves old secrets into present intrigue, contrasting heady emotionalism with more cynical maneuvering. For the first half of the book he spins out the suspense while brilliantly recreating the agonies of the '60s. But then the book sags.
The best scenes are the sparest, involving the trial's subtle legal footwork and snappy gang dialogue. But as secrets emerge their importance hardly seems worth the wait and no matter how finely drawn, it's difficult to warm up to Turow's angst-ridden characters. The ending seems tacked on, at best.
Rating:
Summary: 1970's drama
Review: This book spends more time flashing back to the 60's and 70's than about the current subject of the book. It's apparent that Turow decided he needed to create more history for the characters in his books, and made up some time in this The Laws of our Fathers. I struggled with this one and I hope it's his worst. The character development was way too deep and I found myself skimming pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Drivel about people who miss the 60's
Review: Attracted by Turow's other legal thrillers, I undertook this massive tome with optimism. His technique was to alternate chapters about a current, intriguing murder case, and flashbacks to the main characters' life in the 60's - they have miraculously all been reunited in the current courtroom drama. I found myself bored to tears about the flashbacks, awaiting the legal case to resume. If you miss the 60's and the campus unrest of the time, you may enjoy this. I found myself bored and irritated with almost all the characters; I kept waiting for something profound to be revealed, but it never happened. Skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to his usual standard
Review: Turow is an excellent writer. His stories are much more detailed and better plotted than others like Grisham who rely on a set formula. You don't know what you will get with a Turow book other than quality writing.That said, this book is one of his poorer efforts. Obviously he is more interested in characters here with the plot used as a method to bring out their traits, good/bad points, and worldview. However, this book goes on too long in trying to build each character. The story revolves around a murder trial and characters that just happened to interact around the turbulent Vietnam era before they interact in their new roles related to the trial. The trial presents the opportunity to present detailed character studies of the key individuals. However, there are key problems here. First, the end of the trial seems to be the end of the book as well. That attitude is not helped by a long, drawn out pointless post burial reception for many of the characters. It may not be pointless to Turow who is continuing to establish his characters' traits but to this reader the characters are long past the need to embellish. Following the reception we finally learn more about the background of the trial - why/how the murder occurred and what it says about several other characters in this dual story. The post funeral reception appears to be a lengthy, still pointless set up to establishing this background. Again, there was no need for some of the character development present in the reception to get to this point. Finally, the end is a real let down. First, the text of a "love" letter from one character to another is presented. Neither the character who writes the letter nor the recepient seem to be deserving of this chance they are given by the author to bring them together. This is especially true in the case of the recepient who seems to deserve punishment for things he did rather than the reward of winning back a lost love. At the same time, neither seem right for the other. The contents of the letter avoid any real emotion and appear to be only another way of establishing a character except now in an unrealistic manner. Second, the texts of two eulogies from the funeral are presented in another attempt to establish character but fail miserably. What do they now tell us about each that a perceptive reader could not have determined by this point? They read like anything but a eulogy - each are more like an explanation for a life. Not the life of the deceased but the life of each speaker. A good book and "can't put it down" read until the last 150 pages or so. Turow should have stopped with a good story when he had the chance.
Rating:
Summary: An ambitious attempt
Review: Reading this book was like pulling teeth. What I love about Turow is the character development he brings to his books, tightly woven with tight, sharp legal thrills. Grisham's best is a comic book next to Turow's worst. Quite simply, Turow treats his readers like adults, while Grisham treats his like ignorant children. BUT: In "The Laws of Our Fathers" Turow has gotten carried away. I can only surmise that he awoke one day and decided to write the Great American Legal Novel, as Laws of Our Fathers reads like a combination of Hermann Melville and Saul Bellow. The issues covered -- race and war in the 1960s; religion, separation, parenting, and isolation in the 1990s, are all sigificant and all worthy of a novel. What they are not worthy of is being combined into a single "mass market" novel. The plot simply collapses beneath the weight of the Important Social Matters about which Turow writes. As I say, Turow writes for the thinking person and one expects to be challenged when one buys his work. But in Laws of Our Father the endless pages of 75-line paragraphs made me time and time again put the book aside. There needs to be a periodic tease that makes the reader want to continue, and in Laws of Our Fathers they were too far apart by scores of pages. Fortunately Turow returns to form in Reversible Errors, so one can hope that Laws of Our Fathers is an anomaly.
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