Costco Connection

author spotlight

Author pens his latest in a series
of first-rate legal thrillers
Inn cent Scott Turow pleads

By Christine Thomas

LAWYERS MAKE great storytellers. Chicago criminal defense attorney, onetime Stanford writing teacher and bestselling author Scott Turow has a good explanation why: “Every trial lawyer lives by the motto that if you want to teach a jury something you tell them a story,” he tells The Connection.

It’s no wonder he has soared in parallel careers since the publication of One L, about his first year in Harvard Law School, in 1977, and his breakout novel, Presumed Innocent, which marked him as a genre-busting, literary legal-thriller writer, in 1987. Eight other books and more than 20 years later, Turow has come back to the beginning. His new novel, Innocent— the first full-length one in five years—resurrects Presumed Innocent’s Judge Rusty Sabich, now a bit older and once again at odds with adversary Tommy Molto after the enigmatic death of Sabich’s wife.

Though he has scaled back his legal
duties to make room for his now primary role
as a writer, he still feels engaged when practic-
ing law. “It enables you to do a lot of different
things,” says the sharp and erudite Turow,
who doesn’t seem to stay still for long.
“Whatever happens, by the time Innocent
comes out I intend to be enmeshed in some-
thing else. That’s the best antidote to the ups
and downs of publication.”
Whether that’s the comic thriller idea he’s
been pushing around or that play he’s always
wanted to write, it’s certain his next creative
endeavor will be surprising. “People don’t
want to read about the humdrum and
ordinary—they live the humdrum and
the ordinary,” says Turow. “I want to
write about change.” C

A return to the Presumed

Turow writes at home in the mornings
and on the train while heading to work, where
he often devotes time to pro bono cases he
takes on as a matter of principle and values—
a way to share some of his good fortune with
the underrepresented and disadvantaged.
“I’m lucky that I’ve had a pretty long highlight
reel, certainly as a lawyer,” says Turow, citing
a complex capital punishment case as one of
his most remarkable. (Known as the Alex
Hernandez case, it was described in Ultimate
Punishment). “And obviously, as a novelist,
I’ve had a good roll of the dice.”

Christine Thomas is a Hawaii-based
freelance book critic and writer.
u e hd d the ordinary,” says Turow. “I want to a o The Costco Connection Innocent is available in most Costco warehouses and at Costco.com. Every trial
lawyer lives by the

”

Even though Innocent can function as a
sequel, Turow was conscious not to imitate its
predecessor. He sets it apart from the opening
with a first-person narration, not by Sabich,
but by his son—one that also offers a chilling
glimpse of the novel’s thematic exploration
on a Post-it
note. “At some
point I had jot-
ted just a little
idea for a scene—
a man is sitting on a bed in which the dead
body of a woman lies,” he says.

Innocent landscape gave Turow the opportunity to revisit what he admits is an alter ego of sorts. “I wanted to be with Rusty again, I really did—this flawed, sensitive smart guy who I really seemed to understand,” he says. “He’s different from me in lots of ways. He’s a judge and I’m not; he grew up in a working-class family and I didn’t; and he was a creature of the state criminal justice system, while I came out of the federal system. He’s a quiet and more aloof guy than I am. But I share many of his failings and some of his strengths.”

FRANCE FREEMAN

Then, while writing the serialized novella Limitations for The New York Times, he felt called back to Sabich. “I turned around and saw the note on my desk and realized Rusty Sabich was the man sitting on the bed. Then I was really off to the races.”

them a story.
—Scott Turow
“

motto that if you want to teach a jury something you tell

of change, love and loyalty—then rotates through multiple viewpoints, including Sabich, Molto and an important female character. But because Turow writes his way through stories rather than thinking them out beforehand, he wasn’t always sure how Innocent would be structured. “You put your heart and your hands out in front of you and see what happens,” he explains.