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Paddyfield.com
hardcover $28.00
Farrar Straus Giroux
Paddyfield.com
Powells.com (USA)
More reviews by William May
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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Reversible Errors by Scott Turow
Every three years, starting with Presumed Innocent in 1987, SCOTT TUROW has produced a legal thriller that headed straight for the bestseller list.
As with any author with a dedicated following, readers approach Turow's novels with well-founded expectations: an interesting set up, absorbing twists and turns in the investigation, complex characters, a familiar setting, courtroom fireworks, authentic street language, stylish prose.
All are in place in REVERSIBLE ERRORS.
Love and redemption
A trial lawyer who once won a reversal in the murder conviction of a man who spent eleven years on death row, Turow writes with conviction about the unreliability of testimony and impasses that can slow down the appeal process in murder litigation but, to his credit, he does not engage the reader in an examination of the pros and cons of the death penalty.
What makes this story about the death penalty Turow's most satisfying novel since Presumed Innocent are the main characters: Arthur Raven, the corporate lawyer appointed the "designated loser" in the pro bono defense of Rommy "Squirrel" Gandolph; Gillian Sullivan, the original trial judge recently released from prison for taking bribes and now a recovering drug addict; Muriel Wynn, the ambitious deputy prosecuting attorney and her extramarital lover, homicide detective Larry Starczeck, with whom she secured "Squirrel's" conviction ten years before for a triple homicide in an airport diner.
The courtroom drama aside, this is an astute and rewarding novel about the tortuous affairs of the heart. In the end the reader is as interested in the fragile relationship between Raven and Sullivan, both troubled by life's twists and turns, as in the exoneration of a death row inmate.
Question and answer
In an interview celebrating the publication of The Laws of our Fathers (1996), Turow acknowledged that both the author and the reader may arrive at a point when "you may no longer care about the answer to the question every legal thriller asks (who is responsible?) as much as you care about the characters."
How true of REVERSIBLE ERRORS. Highly recommended.
William May
25/05/2003
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William May has just finished his first novel. He is principal of an international school in Hong Kong. |
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