Hard to put down

As most mystery fans know, we first met Rusty Sabich 23 years ago in Scott Turow’s novel Presumed Innocent, now something of a genre classic. Rusty, then a deputy prosecutor in a thinly disguised Chicago, got himself in a big heap of trouble when he was accused of murdering a colleague. (Harrison Ford played him in the film version.)

When I was first heard that Rusty (now a bigshot judge) was back in a Turow sequel, Innocent, and that, amazingly, he had gotten himself in yet another big heap of trouble, I didn’t see how Turow could make this work. It seemed too contrived.

I’m now two-thirds of the way done with Innocent, and as I think most of its readers will attest, Turow really makes it work. Although I don’t think the sequel is as well written as Presumed Innocent, the fact is, I can’t put the dang thing down.

The author is a master puppeteer, creating situations, motivations and characters and forcing them to collide. You can’t resist seeing how the collisions are resolved. And you get a feel for courtrooms and prosecutors’ offices and gritty urban politics that only a writer who has also been a veteran, big-city attorney can provide.

--- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

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