Chicago defense attorney Turow, formerly a U.S. prosecutor, capitalizes on his intimate knowledge of the courtroom in an impressive first novel that matches Anatomy of a Murder in its intensity and verisimilitude. With the calculating genius of a good lawyer (and writer), Turow, author of the nonfiction One L, draws the reader into a grittily realistic portrait of big city political corruption that climaxes with a dramatic murder trial in which every dark twist of legal statute and human nature is convincingly revealed. The novel's present tense puts the reader firmly in the mind of narrator Rusty Sabich, a married prosecuting attorney whose affair with a colleague comes back to haunt him after she is brutally raped and murdered. Sabich's professional and personal lives begin to mingle painfully when he becomes the accused. His is a gripping and provocative dilemma: "Sitting in court, I actually forget who is on trial at certain moments. . . . And once we get back to the office, I can be a lawyer again, attacking the books, making notes and memos." Turow's ability to forge the reader's identification with the protagonist, his insightful characterizations of Sabich's legal colleagues and the overwhelming sense he conveys of being present in the courtroom are his most brilliant and satisfying contributions to what may become a literary crime classic.

Legal, detective ( )

This was really a very good novel, once I started into it. It has a narrative structure that I am often impatient with, since the narrator is the person who is the one suffering outrageous fortune, but the descriptions of the trial and the denoument were very gripping, enough to keep me up until 1130 PM on a work night to finish it. The protagonist, Rusty Sabich, is a deputy prosecuting attorney during a reelection campaign of the prosecuting attorney. He has had an affair with another prosecutor, and she ends up dead. He is eventually accused and brought to trial for her murder, and is acquitted because his lawyer manages to convince the judge that he was set up by the newly elected prosecuting attorney. Excellent characters, very vivid and believable details of the trials and Chicagostyle politics. ( )

2475 Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow (read 28 Nov 1992) This 1987 novel is full of spelled-out bad words and bad people. But it is a fascinating murder story with a trial as its centerpiece. Rusty Sabich, an assistant prosecutor, has an affair with Carolyn Polhemus, another assistant. The story is carefully worked out, and the story has a tremendous surprise ending. I did not like the book, because the people are so evil. But it is quite a book and very easy to read.. I read and much appreciated the author's book 1-L on May 20, 1982, when the author was still in law school. ( )

Chief deputy prosecutor Rusty Sabich is asked to investigate the murder and rape of Carolyn Polhemus, his co-worker. It turns out she is his former lover. When his boss, Raymond Horgan,loses his re-election bid Rusty finds himself being accused of Carolyn's murder. Rusty's obsession with Carolyn complicates things. ( )