Presumed Innocent

by Scott Turow

Farrar Straus Giroux; 431 PP.; $18.95

The Renaissance Man has lost stature in the modern world. The All-American kid parlays his assets into acceptance at a big-name college. The well-rounded undergraduate wins a free ticket to investment banking heaven.

And so the draw of pre-professionalism skews the consciousness of the new generation. Trapped in a goal-oriented society, today's would-be Renaissance Man often sacrifices perspective for high-level performance in a chosen field.

But concentration can prove blinding.

Take Rusty Sabich: intelligent, attractive, a son of immigrant parents now risen to the post of chief deputy prosecuting attorney in midwestern Kindle County. He is married to his college sweetheart; he plays baseball with his son in the park; he is well-respected by his associates. He possesses, professionally and personally, the trappings of success.

And he stands accused of murdering Carolyn Polhemus, a co-worker with whom he had a short-lived but passionate affair some six months before her death.

Rusty has spent the better part of his adult life investigating crimes like the one with which he now is charged. "How do you enjoy seeing the world from the other side?" Rusty's lawyer asks him before his arraignment.

This is the question Scott Turow makes his readers confront throughout the course of Presumed Innocent. The magic of Presumed Innocent, Turow's second book, is that Rusty--and through his eyes, the reader--is simultaneously the insider and the outsider. Rusty's own desires and friendships and infidelities and hopes are, at the root of it all, the cause of his predicament. And while the reader is not in Rusty's shoes, he or she is subject to the same desires that brought Rusty down.

Yet the reader sees Rusty not as a simple victim but as a driven person forced to pause and confront the complexity of his own mind.

And the red herrings, for all their abundance, never come off as mere plot tricks. Turow, a Harvard Law Graduate who served as an assistant U.S. attorney before becoming a partner in a Chicago law firm, doesn't have to bluff to be clever. Everything--the suspicions, betrayals, attractions--come off making perfect sense, psychologically.

Everyone comes off imperfect.

Presumed Innocent's finest moments are its courtroom scenes. Many of the facts pertinent to the case are known to the reader before any of the witnesses take the stand, and a few shockers surface during the proceedings. But the primary excitement is derived through the interplay--how will these characters, whose relationships Turow has gradually revealed, respond to the drama?

Central to the story's unfolding are Rusty's own reactions, as well. At times cynical, at others devastated, at others calculating, Rusty consistently challenges both himself and the reader to explore and analyze victimization.