What’s it about?

In Kindle County, a favourite setting for this author, there are disturbing undercurrents in the court system. Judges assume their places on the bench through the patronage of politicians and the police are corrupt. Personal injuries lawyer Robbie Feaver (rhymes with "favour") fits right in here, in fact he has been bribing judges and officials throughout his career. Unfortunately for Feaver the jig is up, thanks to the FBI, who have discovered the secret bank account from which he funds his payola. They demand he wear a "wire" in order to avoid the full weight of the criminal law. So we travel the byways of a corrupt system as Feaver digs the dirt for the Feds, looking to nab corrupt judges and their fellow travellers.

The U.S. Attorney, Stan Sennett, together with the FBI, particularly want to get their hands on Brendan Tuohey, a judge who presides over a court Division and is the apparent ringleader of the corruption that has infected the court. Also prominent are Feaver's wife Lorraine, who is slowly dying from Lou Gehrig's disease, and FBI agent (and former Olympic athlete) Evon Miller, who learns much about herself as she shadows Feaver, pretending to be his paralegal.

Kindle County, on the Kindle River, is a place where the worst of human deception is permitted to thrive without fear of retribution or conscience. As the narrator tells us, describing Feaver, "He knew that it was wrong…". From these dubious beginnings we are caught in the thrall of Feaver's Machiavellian world, and what a journey it is!

The pluses

It is a plus or minus depending on your viewpoint (for us a plus), but this latest Turow outing concentrates on characterisation rather than plot, not that the latter is entirely sacrificed.

Turow takes us into the heart of a decaying court system, where the police are corrupt and the judiciary has seen better days. There is a feeling of decadence here that would not be out of place in a novel by one of the Russian masters.

Robbie Feaver is a great character, fully blown and multi-dimensional with enough contradictions in his psyche to keep a band of therapists busy for a year. Like the best fictional characters, he is a person of apparent opposing traits, a self-admitted liar and a cheat who is also faithful to his friends, an inveterate sensualist who also loves his afflicted wife. He's a bit of an actor too, fond of the Stanislavsky method (a la Brando and the Actor's Studio). As he says about the legal profession, "we're all on stage". Feaver is more a con-artist than lawyer - hence his fascination as a character in this novel.

Unlike so many legal television shows and legal thrillers, Turow does not cut corners when presenting the more technical aspects of the law.

It is fascinating to see the way that government agencies - FBI, Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department - operate together in a sting operation. Turow has obviously done his homework.

The minuses

If you're looking for an edge-of-the-seat thriller, please go elsewhere. This novel is character driven, but we also learn a lot about the legal system in all its terrible glory.

The suspense is not on par with some of his earlier novels: in "Presumed Innocent" we wanted to know who killed Carolyn Polhemus; in "Burden of Proof" we wanted to know why the main character's wife committed suicide; and in "Pleading Guilty" we wanted to know what happened to a missing lawyer and a huge sum of cash. Here there is an FBI sting operation, but not much in the way of a genuine mystery.

We're not sure why Turow has chosen Feaver's lawyer, George Mason, to be our tour guide through the misbegotten justice system. He hasn't got much to do with the development of the plot and so seems more like a bystander.

Some readers may be confused (or annoyed) by the switching between 1st and 3rd person narrative.

The legal point

Robbie Feaver is a personal injuries lawyer (hence the title), and in the course of the FBI sting we are exposed to numerous (fake) personal injuries cases.

The term "personal injury" is often used to describe a disease or injury that is suffered by one person because of the fault of another. This doesn't mean that every time you suffer an injury the law can do something about it. In general terms, before you can claim negligence you have to prove that you have suffered "damage" and that the loss or injury was a consequence of the negligence of the person who caused the injury.

But that's not all - whew! no wonder lawyers get headaches. To be negligent the person must owe you a "duty of care", the injury must be reasonably foreseeable, and the person must breach their duty of care.

If all the elements of negligence can be proven, then you may be able to get a lawyer like Robbie Feaver to take up your case and secure some compensation - unlike Robbie, hopefully your lawyer will not have to bribe the judge to win the case.

About the author

Scott Turow started his first published novel, "Presumed Innocent", on the commuter train, jotting in a notebook, to and from his job as a prosecutor in Chicago (although he now swears by the wonders of a computer and a decent word processing program). This is not surprising, given his previous career as a writing instructor at Stanford University. And he wrote his first book ten years before the publication of "Presumed Innocent" - only it wasn't a novel, but the story of his experiences as a law student at Harvard Law School, called "One L".
Turow was an Assistant United States Attorney before he went into private practice at a Chicago law firm. It wasn't long before the publishing firm of Straus & Giroux bought the manuscript for "Presumed Innocent" for $200,000, not bad for a first novel. And that's just the hardcover rights - the paperback sales would have boosted that well past the million mark, not to speak of the movie rights that went for a million on their own. Turow claims that he did not set out to write a blockbuster best-seller, but he's not complaining! To be fair to Turow, "Presumed Innocent" was not his first crack at a novel - that effort was turned down by 25 publishers, and the experience left him devastated. So what did he do? Easy - he got himself accepted into the world's most prestigious law school and became a top-notch lawyer - for all us mere mortals, this is clearly a star turn.

Turow is what is known in the trade as a "litigator" - a lawyer who plans and executes a court room battle, inventing strategies like a Commander in the War Room. He describes himself as a classic workaholic, which might explain how he is able to write complex novels whilst working in a demanding job. Clearly there is cross-pollination - he admits to the benefits of legal training to the budding writer, and the parallels between the stories that are told to readers and juries alike.

If you're wondering where Turow got some of the finer details for "Personal Injuries", it's interesting to know that when he was a US attorney he oversaw an undercover operation. The result? Over 50 people and a dozen judges prosecuted.

Turow continues to work part time as a partner at a Chicago law firm.

Our verdict

Scott Turow virtually invented the "legal thriller" - yes, Grisham may be the genre's most prolific contributor, but it was Turow's brilliant 1987 novel "Presumed Innocent" that got the ball rolling. This is a fair way down that track for Turow, who has progressively upped the ante of characterisation and atmosphere at the expense of the taut mystery that made "Presumed Innocent" such a masterful chronicle of the criminal justice system.

It's hard not to compare Turow with Grisham, because therein lies the difference between the audiences that flock in droves to each author's new releases (an annual event for Grisham!). Grisham understands what the average reader wants, and more particularly, where their prejudices lie - yes, we're all suspicious of lawyers and big business, and so Grisham does a neat turn in moral outrage. Turow is more interested in the legal landscape, the undulations and sometimes sharp fissures that characterise a system that has the power to govern the lives of its citizenry. There are no cheap theatrics in Turow's novels, and the court hearings are more in the nature of a fascinating background to the real action, the intertwining lives of his main characters.

In his fifth novel Turow has left some of the philosophical reflections of "The Laws of the Father" behind, and once more plunged the reader into the political and municipal machinations of Kiddle County. Unfortunately he has not moved back in the direction of his earlier suspense novels, though this may be welcomed by many readers who have plenty of choice in the straightforward legal-thriller market.

This novel is really about the foibles of the judicial system, its cynicism and the way it takes short-cuts in its administration of justice. It's sprawling structure may not be every thriller fan's cup of tea, but it is wonderfully written and rewarding to the reader prepared to put in a modicum of effort. As Turow unveils layer upon layer of corruption and deceit, he also takes us deeper into the duplicity of his main characters, particularly the surprisingly honourable Feaver.

Perhaps not the archetypal beach book, but worth a read if you are looking for something with a little more profundity than the average legal thriller. Turow is an innovator who is not easily imitated, the master of the legal and moral ambiguity.

Want us to tell you when we review another book ?

Read this: The legal information contained above is intended to be general information about the law. It is not a substitute for legal and other professional advice. Lawscape Communications P/L does not accept responsibility for loss to any person, who either acts or does not act because of this information.