More than twenty years after Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto went head-to-head in the shattering murder trial in Presumed Innocent, the men are pitted against each other once again in a riveting psychological match. Now over sixty years old and the chief judge of an appellate court, Sabich has found his wife, Barbara, dead under mysterious circumstances. Molto accuses him of murder for the second time, setting into motion a trial that is vintage Turow-the courtroom at its most taut and explosive.

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.

At certain times of year, the moon shines directly through this bathroom skylight. As I stand in the magic glow, the memory of Anna’s physical presence returns, potent as the melody of a favorite song. I recall my wife’s remark about my difficulties in letting myself have what I want, and almost in reprisal I release myself to the sensation, not merely the movie of Anna and me locked in embrace, but the languor and exhilaration of escaping the restraint on which I’ve staked my life for decades.

I linger there, until, with time, I recede to the present, until my mind takes over from my senses and begins a lawyerly interrogation of myself. The Declaration of Independence said we have a right to pursue happiness–but not to find it. Children die in Darfur. In America, men dig ditches. I have power, meaningful work, a son who loves me, three squares every day, and a house with air-conditioning. Why am I entitled to more?

I like the style of presenting the story from the perspective of the different characters. There were a number of instances where I saw things differently through the eyes of the various storytellers and just when I thought I had the conclusion nailed, a new twist would appear. I had to laugh at how often our guy was aroused. Even the thought of her form made him go solid. And her arms, and her breasts.

And so I look down to her. Our lips meet, our tongues. I groan out loud, and she whispers, “Rusty, oh, Rusty.” I find the exquisite softness of the breast that I have imagined in my hand a thousand times.

Some really horny men wrote fiction today 🙂 but no, a man cannot appear that lusty, otherwise he’d be labelled a creep. Or an old fool. So of course, he has to also find her personality amazing.

And then she speaks the words that elevate my soul. This daring, gorgeous young woman says, “Kiss me again.”

Oh God, this is getting worse. The woman just throws herself at him and whispers seductively:

“Please,” she says. “Not just once. I would feel so slutty.” She stops. “Sluttier.”

Why the hell did he think this is how a woman sounds? And talks? Really?

And what made me think Scott Turrow really took his creative writing classes seriously is when I saw this gem:

Her car, an aged Subaru, goes off with the phlegmy sound of a failing muffler.

Phlegmy. It’s like he had a list of words to use in a book and he really needed this adjective somewhere to make it a descriptive enough scene. I miss Dean Koontz’s early work. He had a way with words. Scott Turrow does not.

And I nearly spilled my coffee when I read about the illicit affair meetings with Anna.

I sit in the lobby, pretending I am awaiting someone else. When the registration clerk turns away, Anna’s eyes find mine. I slip my hand inside my jacket and touch my heart. When you have looked at a woman for months with the imagination’s desiring eye, a part of you cannot accept that it’s really her naked in your arms. And to some extent, it isn’t. Her waist is narrower than I’d realized, the thighs a trifle heavier. Yet the essence of the thrill is having jumped the wall into my fantasies, an experience as otherworldly as crawling between the bars and romping with the jungle animals in the zoo. At last, I think, when I touch her. At last.

The plot scores zero for originality and is deservedly the object of universal scorn, including my own.

Well, he’s not wrong. Also true about the book itself. Why are the main characters so self-centered? And boring? this is simply crazy, hedonistic, nihilistic, and that most important “istic”–unreal. It must stop. Agree. This man sobs at every corner about his life yet he’s banging a young girl while married and declares himself a “powerful man”. Weak in my book but hey.. And the way the character talks about his wife, almost like he hates her:

Barbara’s medicine cabinet as a way to make a point: My wife is damaged goods.

I nearly puked a bit in my mouth when I read the woman’s reply to why she thinks he thinks they shouldn’t be together.

Age, you mean? You’re a man. And I’m a woman. I don’t think about age

God, this is a bloody awful book. I’m slowly trudging through because I want to know whether the cheating husband overdosed his own wife in order to be with the mistress.

Her breasts are perfect, large, beautifully belled, with a broad, dark aureole and long nipples. And I am fascinated by her female parts, where her youth somehow seems centered.
She’s waxed there, ‘a full Brazilian,’ is her term. It’s a first for me, and the smooth feel
provokes my lust like a lightning bolt. I worship, drink, and take my time as she alternately moans and whispers directions.

Plot thickens massively when the old dude goes away for a while and reluctantly cuts the affair short. She meets his son when letting out her apartment and they form a connection of sorts and he asks her out.

What taboo was I violating, whose feelings was I trying to spare? If the father didn’t want me, why couldn’t I be with the son? Wouldn’t that mean things had worked out for everyone? When I reconsidered all of this in the morning, it felt as though all the ground I’d gained in the last fifteen months had washed away beneath my feet.

This is juicy. Anna, the mistress, starts dating her lover’s son. They go together everywhere. She meets the “parents” for dinner. The father is angry but for the sake of his son keeps quiet. But the mother also knows. Knows about the money spent, about the fake trips, about who her son is dating and she’s furious. She wants to kill her husband but because he recognises the pills she’s trying to give him are not Advil (Ibuprofen), she swallows them all thus committing suicide by spite.

Really.

He’s scott free after the murder trial and the new widower has time to mourn the loss of his wife, whom he now appreciates more than his side-piece.

Really.