Innocent (Presumed Innocent, 2) Mass Market Paperback – May 30, 2017

I read Presumed Innocent many years ago, but had never read the sequel. After watching the series on Apple TV, I learned about this book.The characters are developed well, and I like that each chapter alternates between different characters points of view. The story is riveting and I had a hard time putting the book down. I highly recommend this and am looking forward to reading the third book in the series.

I've always thought that Scott Turow was by far the most talented of the Legal Thriller writers; that, indeed, it's doing him a disservice to even lump him together with the Grishams and Metzers. He writes circles around them. This is a fine book, and an unusual one (particularly if you're coming into it expecting a traditional courtroom nail-biter). It's been years since I've read Turow, and perhaps it's because I got married in the meantime that I found this book to be less a thriller than a savvy -- and sobering -- rumination on life and marriage and desire. On expectation and disappointment and triumph. On the distinction between decisions and choices. And most of all: The mystery of all of the above. Rusty Savitch, the nominal center of the book, is no hero -- or, at least, like a lot of us, his heroism is something that isn't seen but discovered. He's flawed and he makes mistakes. Big ones. Turow does a great job of making those mistakes understandable if not justifiable. And, boy, does Rusty pay for them. Like everyone else in this book, he pays, and he learns. There's a lot of soul searching in this book. By everyone. If introspection isn't your thing, you'll want to skip this one.As you'd expect from Turow, the courtroom scenes are riveting and authentic, without piling on the legalese (to a fault, perhaps -- I didn't quite grasp all of the exceptions to the hearsay rule in law school and I didn't quite grasp them here, either). Rusty pretty much takes a siesta during the middle third of the book, but Turow's spot-on depiction of the lead prosecutor, Tommy Molto -- one of those rare and blessed folks who get better, wiser, luckier, and happier with age -- more than carries the show. That said, Turow takes some wrong turns: Nat, Rusty's son, takes on a bigger and bigger role as the book moves on, but Turow never quite captures his voice. When Nat's in introspection mode or narrating the courtroom scenes, no problem. But for such an intelligent, sensitive character, Nat's dialogue comes off as oddly adolescent. The cultural references, the word choices -- they all seem wrong. It's as if Turow has no idea how a 20-something speaks. Turow's depiction of Judge Yee, the trial judge, is also strange. He's an interesting, funny, winning character, but why Turow insists on giving him a groan-inducing speech mannerism that manages to be offensive, unnecessary, and unfunny all at the same time, is beyond me. I think Rusty's wife, Barbara, could have been built up a bit more -- she's a complex character and gets a bit of a short shrift here (in more ways than one). But I was less bothered that the character of Anna -- who plays a huge role in the first third of the book -- drops off the chart for long, long stretches later on. Frankly, a little Anna goes a long way (a lesson Rusty would have been wise to heed).Don't expect an uplifting book. I'm not talking about how it ends (no spoiler worries here) but what it says: There is a price to being a social being. Sometimes it's a long, rocky, road until you finally get what you seek in other people. Sometimes you're on a road you can't really get off of, no matter how much you want to, or know you should. Sometimes, you make choices that aren't really choices. Sometimes, you're lost. Sometimes, you're trapped. And always, in some way, doing what you need to do will cost you. No one gets a free pass.As the defense lawyer, Sandy Stern, would say: "It's an interesting case."

Superb as both a procedural and a human family drama, it is as strong as the justly famous novel it succeeds.

"Innocent" by Scott Turow is the sequel to his 1987 blockbuster "Presumed Innocent." Rusty Sabich, now chief judge of a state appellate court, is accused of the murder of a woman just as he was more than twenty years before, and his old nemesis, Prosecuting Attorney Tommy Molto, has him in court again, but this time for the murder of his wife. The courtroom narrative section is told mainly from the point of view of Rusty's son, Nat, in many ways the least prescient character. The prosecutor's long sections are told in the third person. Sections are narrated in the first person by Rusty and by his mistress Anna.Turow is a very felicitous writer, a good stylist who is skilled at characterization and plotting. Rusty's wife is so heavy into so many drugs for her manic-depression that it is mind-boggling. She is a computer whiz who lives in her own world apart from her husband's. When he's having his affair with Anna, and when the narration is switching back and forth between the two, we, as readers, are given more insights, but as the book goes on, Rusty becomes more difficult to fathom. He turns out to be too much of a cold fish, and we wish we got deeper into his psyche. Rusty at the end of the book is more of an enigma than he was at the beginning. Characters turn up from the previous book like his defense attorney Sandy Stern. Molto is afraid that he'll be hung out to dry as he was the first time, but he's continually egged on by his young hot-to-trot assistant, Jim Brand. Rusty says, "this case is old wine in a new bottles. It's just a lot of rancid crap from a compulsive guy who never figured out how to give up." Frustrated by his father's mood, his son Nat says, "up close and personal, my dad has actually got the cork in pretty tight."It's a terrific story, I think, spoiled by too much computer gobbledygook for the average reader like me. The author's use of computer terminology and geeky stuff in the court section is a detriment, and one wishes for the old days when human actions and simpler devices were the norm for crime novels. The book provides an insider's, a pro's knowledge of the way courts, judges, and the law operates. The trial scenes are well-managed and fascinating. It's a suspenseful roller coaster ride and well worth the trip.

Having found Scott Turow books late as his Presumed Innocent was recommended to me, I just had to read this follow-up and found it just a good as the previous, if not better in some ways as it was easier to read.

Excellent, much better than Presumed Innocent.

Mesmo sendo a continuação de estória anterior, não é preciso conhecê-la para se deleitar com as idas e vindas da trama. Um bom "thriller", mas que perde um pouco a força ao dar explicações no final.

Actually wanted to read Presumed Innocent by Scott Turrow but got Innocnet.Not anything graeat...just readable...

There are sequels one can easily do without. And there are sequels you probably were waiting for a long time - though you might fear that the longer the wait the higher the chances of an author or director losing his touch for the story.For me, Scott Turow's addition to the Rusty Sabich story of "Presumed innocent" belongs to the second category and as Turow continues to tell the saga of his imaginary, richly detailed Kindle County over the years, one could nearly expect or at least hope that he takes another look at what happened to former district prosecuting attorney and nowadays judge, Rusty Sabich."Innocent" is well written, as all of his books are, but in this novel his skills come as a blessing and as a curse at the same time...There are moments I had the strong feeling that Turow takes too much delight of narrating Sabich's battle against a possible sentence for having murdered his wife in a clever way with almost mathematical precision (and a timeline at the beginning of the chapter)... This "overstructuring" of the story unfortunately limits the reader's chance to sympathize with the novel's protagonists or to consider their actions, especially in the first half of the book.However, the second half gains life and shape as we finally discover that it's actually Tommy Molto, former rival/colleague from "Presumed innocent" and acting prosecutor attorney in the new trial against Sabich, who's in Turow's main focus of "Innocent". Turow's portray of Molto as an aging and constantly inferiority complexed attorney is complex and carried by the author's liking for this figure... and in the end this far more touching than Rusty Sabich's fate, despite adding Sabich's son and lawyer-to-be as an emotional sidekick.Scott Turow is a wonderful narrator who takes his readers seriously and in this regard "Innocent" is not an exception and once again a good read. It could have been great one, though, if he wouldn't have taken himself so seriously as the craftsman of this novel and trusted more his imagination and the story itself.