Innocent by Scott Turow

I shared a while back how much I liked Scott Turow's debut novel, Presumed Innocent.  It was written in 1987 and was a gripping legal drama with twists and turns in every scene.  It was exactly the type of thriller that I enjoy so much.

I had very high hopes for Innocent, Scott Turow's recent book that is the sequel to Presumed Innocent.  Some of those hopes were realized and some were not.  It's hard to come back after 20 years to a set of characters and take their lives forward, hard for the author and also for the reader.

A man is sitting on a bed.  He is my father.
The body of a woman is beneath the covers.  She was my mother.
This is not really where the story starts.  Or how it ends.  But it is the moment my mind returns to, the way I always see them...

The police will make him go through his account three or four more times--how he sat there and why.  His response will never vary.  He will answer every question in his usual contained manner, the stolid man of law who looks out on life as an endless sea.
He will tell them how he moved each item.
He will tell them where he spent each hour.
But he will not tell anybody about the girl.

The story begins with these words.  Twenty years after Presumed Innocent ends, Rusty Sabich once again finds himself charged with murder.  This time it is the suspicious death of his wife, Barbara, and the prosecutor is his old foe, Tommy Molto.  Sabich is now 60 years old and the chief judge of the appellate court.  He is running for a seat on the state supreme court.  This tragedy could not have happened at a worse time for Rusty's career.  He must again call on Sandy Stern to defend him through a trial that has many red herrings and surprise twists.  Rusty's son, Nat, now an attorney himself, and Sandy's daughter, Marta, also an attorney, are part of the action, as is Rusty's former law clerk, Anna, who is now in a relationship with Nat.  Each of these people play an important part in getting to the truth of just what happened the morning Barbara Sabich died.

The first part of the book was slow going for me.  It seemed to take quite a long time to set up the story and get the investigation going.  The chapters alternate between characters and move back and forth through time as the reader sees the months leading up to the crime and then also the trial itself.  Once the trial began, the pace was quicker, but sadly, I never got quite the buzz that I received from reading the previous tale.  Don't get me wrong.  This is a decent mystery and it may have been that I spent too much time trying to puzzle out the solution.

I will admit that I was surprised on more than one occasion as the events unfolded.  This book has a lot of introspection by several of the characters and that seemed to interrupt the flow of the investigation at certain times.  I was satisfied with the conclusion, however, and so I am glad that I read this book.  As I stated, it would have been hard to equal the thrill that I got from reading the previous book.  I do feel that the reader would benefit from starting with Presumed Innocent first.  Many of the subtle hints between characters in Innocent will be clearer with prior knowledge of the back story.

I want to thank Brianne of Hachette Book Group/Grand Central Publishing for sending me an advance copy of this book for review.