Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow

Published by Grand Central Publishing on January 14, 2025

My favorite novels about the nature of law and justice are The Ox-Bow Incident and A Covenant with Death. My favorite novels that mock the legal system are Bleak House and A Frolic of His Own. My favorite novel about a trial is To Kill a Mockingbird. My favorite legal thriller is Presumed Innocent. I highly recommend them all.

Published in 1987, Presumed Innocent told the story of Rusty Sabin, a prosecutor who was wrongly accused of killing an illicit lover. Sabin, by then an appellate judge, was accused of killing his wife in the follow-up novel, 2010’s Innocent. Presumed Guilty marks Sabin’s third starring role, this time as a defense attorney rather than a defendant.

The categories I invented for my list of favorite novels about the law overlap. All are represented in Presumed Guilty. Sabin entertains the reader with his hard-earned opinions about the relationship between law and justice. At times, the novel mocks the legal system, although Scott Turow does so by depicting it accurately. The system too often mocks itself.

Rusty Sabin respects the law but has been known to break it. He is easily forgiven for harmless and well-intended transgressions. Given his experiences, Sabin harbors an understandable contempt for those who place the freedom of others at risk by undermining rights that are essential to a fair trial.

Through Sabin, Turow spotlights the criminal justice system’s imperfections and explains why they impair an accused’s opportunity to have a fair shake against the government. Without lecturing, he identifies social problems — racism, the growing belief that facts are whatever you want them to be — and illustrates how they stain the justice system.

Turow also mocks prosecutors who see themselves as avenging warriors, a self-important conception that excuses any violation of rules that stand in the way of a conviction. Turow reminds us that prosecutors have a dark history of excluding Blacks from juries, hiding exculpatory evidence, and violating court orders to keep silent about inadmissible evidence, among other offenses.

While Presumed Guilty thus earns praise for its astute analysis of a flawed legal system, it also excels as a legal thriller. It isn’t as fresh or astonishing as Presumed Innocent, but it tells a compelling story that, like many legal thrillers, centers upon a whodunit mystery. Is the defendant guilty and, if not, can the reader identify the true culprit? As is often the case in the real world, evidence is murky and open to interpretation. Turow lets the suspense build before the reader learns the (somewhat) surprising and (mostly) plausible truth.

Because this is how Sabin’s life has gone, the story centers on a crime that touches his family. Sabin has retired and is living in a quiet place outside of Kindle County. He lives with Bea and her adopted son Aaron. On Sabin’s 75th birthday, Bea agreed to marry him, but they haven’t set a date.

Aaron is a 22-year-old Black man who abused drugs during his teens. He was joined in that addiction by Mae Potter, with whom he fell madly in love. Mae has a streak of wildness that, combined with narcissism, compulsive behavior, and moments of deep depression, make her a difficult girlfriend and a challenge to her family’s high place in the county’s social hierarchy.

Mae’s grandfather, Mansfield “Mansy” Potter, is Sabin’s best friend in the county. Mae’s father, Harrison “Hardy” Potter, is the county’s prosecuting attorney. Sabin tolerates Hardy for the sake of his friendship with Hardy’s father.

Aaron is on probation because he was arrested while holding Mae’s drugs. He isn’t allowed to leave the county. Sabin becomes concerned when Aaron is late returning from a camping trip with Mae. He will be forced to report Aaron’s absence if he doesn’t come home. Although Aaron finally returns, Mae doesn’t. Nor does Aaron seem overly concerned about her disappearance.

Aaron will be charged with Mae’s murder when her decomposing body is found in her wrecked car some weeks later. It doesn’t help that he apparently flees when the body is discovered, only to be arrested when he makes a mysterious appearance at the place where Mae’s body was found. Was he there to destroy evidence, as the prosecutor contends?

A pathologist concludes that Mae died of strangulation. Against his better judgment, Sabin agrees to represent Aaron for lack of a more skilled and affordable alternative. I doubt any lawyer who has never defended a murder case would start by representing his fiancé’s adopted son, but Turow creates a background that makes the representation plausible, if not inevitable. Anyway, the story just wouldn’t be as good if Sabin didn’t defend the case.

Turow plants clues that could incriminate other suspects, including Hardy and Bea. Sabin seizes the clues to create doubt in the prosecution’s case. The reader will use them to ponder the killer’s identity — unless Mae committed suicide, a possibility that the forensic evidence suggests. But how does that theory account for the absence of a rope around her neck when it was recovered from the wrecked car? And how did a similar rope end up in Sabin’s garage?

Courtroom scenes make or break legal thrillers. Turow is the genre’s master of capturing the drama of a riveting cross-examination. He also reveals the “inside baseball” of criminal defense, the strategic choices that lawyers make minute-by-minute in response to the changing trial dynamic. Courtroom politics are central to the story, given the prosecutor’s contempt for the judge — and for the law when it gets in the way of his self-righteous belief that only he is the true arbiter of justice.

Aaron might be Turow’s most sympathetic character. He has a tough but credible backstory. He has learned that he needs to embrace truths rather than run from them. That guiding principle makes him want to testify, pitting him against Sabin’s fear that the jury will want to convict him as soon as it learns about his history of drug abuse and probation violations.

This is Turow’s best novel since Presumed Innocent. It mixes a credible mystery with a suspenseful trial that leads to surprising revelations. Sabin digs deep within himself to resolve conflicting feelings about his relationships with Bea, Mansy, and Aaron. The story reveals powerful truths about the law but doesn’t let them slow the pace of an engaging story.

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