Category: Legal Fiction

A review of Scott Turow’s sequel to ‘Presumed Innocent.’ The new novel, ‘Innocent,’ is flawed but gripping.

‘Innocent’

by Scott Turow

Grand Central, 407 pp., $27.99

Twenty-three years ago, Scott Turow published the runaway best-seller “Presumed Innocent,” a courtroom drama featuring a plot that was clever, chilling and wildly unpredictable. Although he has published several novels since, Turow has never re-created the impact, creativity or depth of his first novel.

Turow’s new thriller, “Innocent” (in bookstores Tuesday), is a sequel to “Presumed Innocent,”set 20 years after the original. Rusty Sabich, the young prosecutor wrongly accused of murder in the first novel, is now 60 years old and the chief judge of the court of appeals. When Sabich’s wife dies suddenly, county prosecutor Tommy Molto is instantly on alert. Molto aggressively prosecuted Sabich in the first novel and suffered a humiliating defeat. But age has made Molto cautious. Only when a quiet investigation pushed by his hotheaded colleague Jimmy Brand implicates Sabich does Molto indict Sabich for murder.

Sabich, of course, retains Sandy Stern, his soft-spoken lawyer from the first novel. Stern, too, has aged and is struggling with lung cancer and its treatment. Assisted by his daughter and law partner Marta, Stern wheezes from his courtroom efforts and holds on to a table for support during the trial.

Sabich had an affair with the victim in the first novel that complicated not only his criminal defense but his marriage as well. Disappointingly, Sabich veers into another affair, this time with one of his young law clerks, Anna Vostic. It is, of course, not a convenient fact for an older man with a dead wife.

Turow’s writing is thoughtful but something is missing. “Presumed Innocent” featured characters so carefully drawn you knew them and understood their actions. Here, Turow glosses over the detail and the novel suffers for it as you scratch your head and wonder at the motivation for unlikely developments.

Perhaps older men are just inherently vulnerable to beautiful young women, but it is difficult not to groan when Sabich succumbs to one of his law clerks. Remember, this is the guy who underwent a highly public ordeal in the first novel and is now on the court of appeals, with a son the same age as the law clerk and a wife still suffering from his first affair. People can be foolish, but this seems simply improbable. Sabich is too easily seduced, too careless, too cavalier.

And Sabich reveals the outcome of an appeal to a criminal defendant. The suggestion that a judge would so carelessly reveal such a confidence is, again, simply difficult to accept. It would be a horrific violation of judicial obligations, and Turow doesn’t offer any plausible explanation for it.

As a result, one is left struggling to understand or empathize with Sabich. Indeed, Molto – the first novel’s young firebrand who has mellowed with age, a late marriage and a young son – is more sympathetic here, almost flipping the team you cheer for. Perhaps that’s Turow’s larger lesson: that time leavens everything and that innocence is relative.

Turow’s writing is at its best in the courtroom, with searing cross examinations, surprising revelations and dramatic plot twists. Of course nothing is what it seems and – no secrets revealed here – this trial is far from a mere rematch. Only when the last page is turned do all the pieces finally fall into place with a soft and entirely unpredictable click.

Even with its flaws, “Innocent” is terrific and Turow remains by far the best courtroom novelist of our time, shaming the far more prolific and predictable John Grisham. This was a book worth waiting for.

‘The Appeal’

by John Grisham

Doubleday, 368 pp., $27.95

Few people read John Grisham novels for literary depth, lyrical writing or passionate prose. Grisham, indeed, is known for his powerhouse stories, thundering along at breakneck speed without much of a passing thought to character development, thoughtful writing or even colorful prose.

Grisham’s new novel, “The Appeal,” is strikingly different. Grisham appears to be bent on not only telling an entertaining tale, but confronting a serious issue to boot. Set in rural Mississippi, the novel centers on a small town devastated by pollution from Krane Chemical Co., which polluted the town’s water supply for years before it pulled up stakes and moved its facilities to Mexico. With a population suffering from cancer at 12 times the national rate, the town of Bowmore had seen more than its fair share of death and suffering.

The novel opens with the jury delivering a stunning verdict against Krane, including $41 million in punitive damages. The verdict is pure vindication for the small-town husband-and-wife lawyer team of Wes and Marygrace Payton, who have sacrificed everything to pursue the lawsuit. The chemical company, however, is owned by Wall Street financier Carl Trudeau, who is outraged at the verdict and has no intention of paying even a dime. Instead, after berating his raft of well-heeled corporate lawyers for losing the case, he appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

The only problem is that the state court is split, 5-4, with the conservative justices narrowly outvoted by a more liberal majority. With a $41 million verdict at risk, Trudeau is not taking any chances on mere legal advocacy to protect his interests. Instead, Trudeau recruits Ron Fisk, a well-groomed young man with a picture-perfect family, no discernible baggage and a strong pro-business bent to run against Court Justice Sheila McCarthy.

Trudeau pours millions of dollars into the race, coordinated by a slick organization of political operatives, pollsters, and advertising consultants, all designed to vilify Justice McCarthy as a wildly “liberal” justice bent on protecting criminals, promoting gay marriage, and restricting gun ownership. Sound familiar? With a carefully calibrated campaign, the Justice is buried under a virtual avalanche of televisions ads, radio spots and campaign literature. By the end of the campaign, even Fisk is left wondering who is funding the campaign and, more importantly, why. And the verdict on the appeal? Well, that’s best left for the last few pages of the novel.

The novel is something of a departure for Grisham. Unlike so many of his prior novels, this one seems pointedly designed to address a serious issue rather than simply to entertain with implausible plot twists.

Instead, Grisham confronts in stark relief the dangers of electing judges in an era of big-money politics. It is a timely issue and a critical problem facing every state where judges and justices are elected. Judicial races rarely are the focus of a great deal of voter attention and thus are easily manipulated. The justices themselves are rather severely limited in what they can say, how much time or effort they can expend to defend themselves and their decisions, or on their own campaigns. The combination makes them uniquely vulnerable to organized assault by dedicated interest groups, with predictable results, even in states like Washington.

Grisham illustrates the dangers of such a system with a clever story and thoughtful plot. Of course, much of what makes Grisham’s writing so predictable remains – the bad guys are stereotyped to the point of absurdity. The good guys (Wes and Marygrace, of course) are saintly to the point of straining credulity. Couldn’t they have just one weakness, character flaw or demon to wrestle with? And for most of the book, things unfold just about how you expect them to, when you expect them to and with all too predictable results. But not entirely and that’s what makes this novel different and worth reading.

In the end, Grisham closes with a scene designed to stay with the reader, and to raise the question whether electing judges is, all things considered in this day and age, an approach worth reconsidering. That question is worth the price of the book.

‘Damage Control’

by Robert Dugoni

Warner, 406 pp., $24.99

Bad news, they say, comes in threes. That’s certainly true for Dana Hill, a talented young lawyer at a prestigious Seattle law firm, who juggles a young daughter who needs her attention, a demanding and arrogant boss and a self-absorbed husband. But for Hill, the star of “Damage Control,” the new murder mystery from Seattle author Robert Dugoni, those challenges are the least of it. She is diagnosed with breast cancer just as she discovers her husband is having an affair. Worse, her brother is found brutally murdered, the apparent victim of a burglary gone wrong.

Rather than wallow in self-pity, Hill instead throws herself into investigating the murder. Hill’s investigation parallels the announcement of the presidential ambitions of Washington Sen. Robert Meyers. A Democratic candidate with chiseled good looks and a stunningly beautiful wife at his side, seeking a “Return to Camelot,” Meyers has a hidden dark side.

It’s not hard to foresee the inevitable collision of these two storylines. Before long, Hill comes face to snout with Meyers and justice is served on several levels.

Dugoni’s first novel, “The Jury Master,” was a terrific debut. “Damage Control,” unfortunately, offers little of the same. The book is set in Seattle with a vengeance. Seattle is not just background scenery but almost a subplot of the novel, with detailed descriptions of every bridge, island and overpass. This is boosterism run amok; it’s hard to imagine a book set elsewhere would bother with all the local geography.

More fundamentally, the novel is predictable and filled with cartoonish characters. Meyers’ good looks/beautiful wife/Kennedyesque style is achingly stereotypical, and he is so plainly the villain that he all but sports a waxed mustache from the moment he struts on stage. The novel similarly suffers from over-the-top mysticism in the form of an implausible shamanlike jewelry designer who helps Hill solve the murder. For a writer of Dugoni’s talent, the novel is a disappointing encore.

‘The Jury Master’

by Robert Dugoni

Warner, 438 pp., $24.95

John Grisham, move over. With his debut courtroom thriller, “The Jury Master,” Seattle author Robert Dugoni explodes from the tired pack of Grisham wannabes with a riveting tale of murder, treachery and skullduggery at the highest levels.

David Sloane is an extraordinary San Francisco trial lawyer, with an unbroken string of courtroom victories that astonishes even Sloane himself, as he gets even obviously guilty clients acquitted against all odds. Tormented by recurring nightmares, however, Sloane is plainly troubled emotionally. His life is turned upside down when his home is ransacked.

More than 3,000 miles away, Tom Molina, a West Virginia police detective, investigates what appears at first to be a relatively obvious suicide in a national park. But things get more complicated when a high-handed assistant United States attorney reveals that the dead man is Joe Branick, a close friend of Robert Peak, the U.S. president, and demands control over the investigation. Suspecting something more sinister than a suicide, Molina refuses and soon learns that his suspicions are well-founded.

These seemingly unconnected events coalesce when Sloane, reading the headlines, realizes that Branick had attempted to contact him in the last few hours of his life and had mailed him a package. Sloane’s realization that the package and the break-in may be connected is underscored as events hurtle forward with the brutal murder of Sloane’s elderly neighbor, leaving Sloane, a former Marine, stunned and on the run.

The president, meanwhile, is dealing with plummeting approval ratings, the apparent suicide of his friend and an emerging oil deal with Mexico to help secure greater independence from Middle Eastern oil – as well as a related threat on his life from underground guerilla groups in Mexico.

Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems. Innocent people die, trained military operatives take on both Molina and Sloane, and a 30-year-old conspiracy all converge at breakneck speed. The tale sweeps to a dramatic conclusion in the same national park where it all started, where Sloane learns the reasons for his recurring nightmares, the president’s fears are realized and justice is, ultimately, served.

It’s a great story that fairly thunders along from start to finish, and a terrific debut. Dugoni, a Seattle lawyer who retired from the practice of law in 1999 to concentrate on his writing, has previously published “The Cyanide Canary,” a nonfiction account of an environmental litigation similar to Jonathan Harr’s “A Civil Action.”

Of course, saying that this potboiler rivals Grisham is a rather vicious case of damning with faint praise. Like Grisham, Dugoni doesn’t even try to comment on larger issues, and the political context woven into the background is both laughably simplistic and curiously out of date. A Marxist guerrilla group is involved; when was the last time a Marxist guerrilla group served as anything but the punch line of a joke or a historical footnote? Dugoni, moreover, cuts back and forth from scene to scene, almost as if written for a particularly disjointed episode of the popular television show “24.” Then, again, with royalties for syndication rights being what they are, perhaps that’s precisely what Dugoni intended.

But, in all fairness, this is a debut novel and Grisham’s first one was no award winner, either. Dugoni has a flair for developing an engaging plot, with memorable characters, and keeping things moving like an overcaffeinated barista. For an opening salvo, it’s hard to ask for more.

‘The King of Torts’

by John Grisham

Doubleday, $27.95

After venturing into other forms of fiction, John Grisham returned to the courtroom with last year’s thriller, “The Summons.” He re-enters the fray with his latest courtroom thriller, “The King of Torts.”

In his new novel, Grisham takes on the sleazy world of mass-tort lawyers who specialize in suing large corporations in enormous class-action lawsuits, securing huge fees in return for relatively small recoveries for their clients. “The King of Torts” offers everything one expects from Grisham: fast and suspenseful action, a thin and extremely implausible plot and a stunningly predictable conclusion.

Clay Carter is an overworked, underpaid public defender in Washington, D.C., representing a motley collection of junkies, repeat offenders and violent criminals. Stuffed in a dismal, cramped office, he is burned out and disheartened. When his longtime girlfriend walks out on him, egged on by her preening and socially ambitious parents, Carter finds himself at the end of his rope. But suddenly, as so often seems to happen in Grisham novels, a well-dressed stranger appears, offering Carter a deal too good to resist. Max Pace is a legal “fireman” hired by big corporations to deal with potential legal troubles before they explode. Pace’s client is a big pharmaceutical company whose drug experiments went dangerously awry, leading to a string of deaths. The offer? Represent the victims, broker quiet settlements and releases, and earn a fee of $15 million in return.

Carter wrestles with the decision, but ultimately accepts the offer. He quits his job, recruits several colleagues, and opens shop in a posh law office set up by Pace virtually overnight. Bankrolled by the $15 million windfall, Carter gets down to work quickly.

With Pace providing a series of inside tips, Carter files a series of mass-tort suits, using expensive nationwide television advertising to drum up thousands of clients. He is soon hailed as the “King of Torts,” a boy wonder of the mass-tort bar, and is initiated into the small network of big shot, self-proclaimed fighters for the underdogs.

At first repulsed at his colleagues, who seem more interested in buying the biggest jet, the fanciest sports car or the most palatial mountain retreat, Carter’s resistance is slowly overcome as he slips ever deeper into the lifestyle of the rich and ostentatious mass-tort lawyer. Along the way, he engages in blatant insider trading in the stocks of the corporations he is suing, betrays virtually all of his clients and their interests, files lawsuits with little or no evidence to support them, and accepts advice from and invests millions on the word of people he barely knows. The ethical violations and assorted criminal behavior in just the first 100 pages would make an outstanding law-school ethics exam.

Of course, the entire plot strains the patience of even the most credulous readers. Why would a lawyer, who has heretofore suffered on a public-defender salary (despite a sparkling law-school career at Georgetown Law School) in the interests of the public good, abandon everything on the improbable word of an unknown stranger and suddenly launch himself on a whirlwind of shady deals and ethical violations? Why would a “fireman” like Pace risk disclosure by involving unknown lawyers and particularly obscure criminal lawyers who, of all people, know better than most the costs of shady deals? And what corporation – no matter how deranged – would risk this sort of open manipulation of the civil-justice system? Far from helping to insulate the company, such tactics would enormously magnify the problem and expose those involved to serious criminal charges.

Class-action litigation in the United States is certainly long overdue for reform, and Grisham’s portrayal of self-righteous and hypocritical leaders of the mass-tort bar, with their expensive Colorado ranches, Gulfstream jets and sports cars, may be apt and well-deserved. But Grisham offers little beyond parody. He offers no credible examination of the issues raised by the explosion of class suits, nor even a hint of how we might as a society properly balance the need for compensation in large-scale litigation against the danger of windfall attorneys’ fees that dwarf the recovery for the clients.

Of course, neither Grisham nor his fans will likely pause long to consider any of this a flaw in the book. To the contrary, Grisham sells suspense, not thoughtful plot development, social commentary or even interesting character sketches.

And on this level, “The King of Torts” delivers with a vengeance. If only out of morbid curiosity, the reader is dragged through the sordid tale to its all-too-predictable conclusion. Ill-gotten gains evaporate with a change in fortunes. The FBI begins to investigate. And Carter learns what he knew all along: that some things are too good to be true.

‘Reversible Errors’

by Scott Turow

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28

Even those most committed to the death penalty usually recognize that no system is perfect and, despite all our efforts, that mistakes can be made. Scott Turow’s dazzling new courtroom thriller, “Reversible Errors,” tackles the nation’s ultimate sanction and the fallibility of our justice system.

The novel, set in Turow’s fictional Kindle County, revolves around a triple murder in a county diner for which a street weasel named Rommy “Squirrel” Gandolf has confessed after a rather difficult interrogation session. Ambitious prosecutor Muriel Wynn and gritty street detective Larry Starczek secure a conviction, and death sentence, for Gandolf.

Ten years later, as Gandolf sweats out the last few weeks before his execution date, the federal Court of Appeals appoints Arthur Raven to represent Gandolf on his last-ditch habeas corpus petition. Raven, a polished corporate litigator unfamiliar with criminal defense (much less death-penalty litigation), reluctantly takes on the case and struggles to gain vindication for what he believes is an innocent man, boxed in by seemingly insurmountable odds.

Evidence soon surfaces that might demonstrate Gandolf’s innocence, in the form of another inmate, Erno Erdai, who chillingly confesses to the crime and provides convincing evidence of his guilt just before he dies of lung cancer. The stage thus set, Raven and Wynn struggle over Erdai’s testimony, with Gandolf’s life hanging in the balance.

Raven, now fully committed to saving an innocent man from death, meets his match with Wynn, equally set on demonstrating the validity of her original prosecution, particularly in light of her ongoing campaign to become the new county prosecutor. The lightning crackles as the two clash in the courtroom, each convinced of the moral righteousness of his or her cause.

Turow unfolds a typically twisted plot, complete with bombshell developments and stunning revelations spattered across the pages. With his own death-penalty litigation experience, Turow captures that rare balance between accurate legal details and arresting plot development. Turow skillfully weaves past and present, avoiding a linear narrative and forcing the reader to continually revise the events, motives and actions that occurred on the night of the murder.

But Turow’s real strength lies behind the story, as he develops the protagonists into real people, carrying real burdens and making real choices that they sometimes live to regret. Everyone in this book has made mistakes, but only some are willing to confront them. Indeed, the novel’s central theme of redemption addresses the very line between errors that are recoverable – legal and emotional – and those that are not.

Raven, a career bachelor with no likely prospects, becomes involved with Gillian Sullivan, the judge who presided over the original Gandolf trial but was herself subsequently convicted of taking bribes and has only just been released from prison. Beaten and defeated, she struggles with her disgrace and disbelief that her crimes can ever be truly put behind her. Raven, touched by her vulnerability, struggles to build a relationship with her, uncertain how to reach her and all too aware that she could become a witness in the case.

On the prosecution side, Wynn has problems of her own. She sacrificed a once-promising relationship with Detective Starczek and married a wealthy, powerful man, only to realize as she is forced back into a working relationship with Starczek that the compromise she made may have been less to her advantage than she realized. Starczek, in turn, harbors a bitter recognition that he is “just a cop” unlikely to capture the attention of an ambitious and beautiful prosecutor like Wynn.

Erdai himself struggles to recast the past, atone for his sins and protect his own interests.

It’s a compelling mixture of carefully drawn characters that add immeasurable depth to the novel. Unfortunately, though, Turow leavens the book with unnecessarily graphic sex scenes, which actually detract from the development of the characters, add nothing to the plot, and are almost laughably drawn from an awkward male perspective. They are neither substantial (or subtle) enough to be erotic, nor passing enough to be colorful background. A stronger editor could surely have improved this text with judicious use of a red pen.

But then, why quibble? Turow is so far above the pack that, even freighted with this minor flaw, the book nonetheless easily rises above it. Turow has, by this point, plainly laid claim to the title of Master of the Courtroom Thriller. And he deserves it.

‘The Summons’

by John Grisham

Doubleday, $27.95

John Grisham, the master of legal thrillers, is back with another. With no fewer than 13 astoundingly popular novels under his belt, his new offering, “The Summons,” features much of what made him so popular: clever hooks, characters under pressure and endearing Southern settings. Unfortunately, Grisham’s new novel (in bookstores today) lacks the most important elements of his past success: suspense, drama and novel plot twists. Without it, what remains is a bland and tasteless “Grisham Lite” not worth the time and effort to read to its plodding and all-too-obvious denouement.

“The Summons” revolves around the death of a prominent, but retired, small-town judge, Reuben Atlee. Atlee, who lives in the family’s decaying mansion in Clanton, Miss., is famously crusty and demanding. Dying of cancer, he summons his two sons to discuss his estate. One, Ray Atlee, is a law professor in Virginia who has disappointed his father by teaching rather than returning to Clanton to join his father’s law office. Forrest, the other son, is even worse: a drunkard and drug addict who alternates between expensive rehab, embarrassing drunken frolics and failed efforts to remain clean.

Ray reluctantly returns to Clanton as directed. When he arrives, he discovers his father, dead, apparently from either the cancer or an overdose of morphine. Among his papers is a new will, completed by his father moments before his death, leaving his estate to his sons.

But as Ray recovers from the shock of his death, he finds something even more surprising: a little more than $3 million in cash stuffed neatly into 27 boxes on the bookshelf of the silent, dark mansion. The cash – far more than the judge could possibly have earned in his working life – raises provoking questions as to its origins.

Ray struggles with how to respond: If he reports the cash, it would inevitably tarnish his father’s reputation and, because of estate taxes, would be subject to crushing taxation. And, if Forrest receives half, he is likely to self-destruct.

Ray decides to keep the horde of cash secret – and safe – while he tries to unravel the mystery of its origin. But Ray is not the only one aware of the cash, a fact that becomes painfully clear as Ray receives a variety of anonymous and threatening notes and letters.

The bulk of the action in the book is devoted to Ray’s sometimes frantic efforts to protect the cash, determine its source and do the right thing while sorely tempted by the apparent windfall. Unable to bank the cash – because of the paper trail it would create and questions it would raise – he attempts a variety of sometimes-comical protective efforts.

In a resolution that is almost painfully obvious from early in the novel, Ray’s dilemma is ultimately solved for him. But there’s no need to worry about staying up late for this one. As the final page turns, you are more likely to be agitated not by the suspense, but at the lack of it.

“The Summons” represents a return to the world of law for Grisham. After 11 best-selling courtroom thrillers, his last two novels (“A Painted House” and “Skipping Christmas”) had nothing to do with law or lawyers.

But it is, in many ways, a disappointing return. Grisham’s wildly popular earlier novels often featured lawyers, witnesses or jurors caught in a tangle of dangerous crosscurrents, running from death or worse, with the entire morass suddenly clearing with a surprising and plot-twisting finale.

No such luck here. This novel plods along at a slow and wobbly pace to a conclusion so plainly foretold that the only suspense is how long we have to wait to get there.

To his credit, Grisham’s writing is more evocative than his past efforts. Although most of the characters are Grisham’s standard cardboard cutouts, Ray Atlee, at least, is developed. The careful drawing of the decaying Atlee mansion, too, is worth noting, with its creaking floorboards and dominating oil paintings coming to life as almost a character in its own right.

But this hardly saves the book from itself. Almost everything that might otherwise make the book worth reading is missing: suspense, a spine-tingling surprise ending or even a larger point about law, money or the moral dilemmas we all confront every day. Grisham diehards will no doubt snap it up in record numbers, but most will finish it with the same question: That’s it?

‘Wild Justice’

By Phillip Margolin

HarperCollins,$26

When Portland Detective Bobby Vasquez receives an anonymous tip that notorious drug dealer Martin Breach is about to make a large cocaine sale to prominent surgeon Vincent Cardoni in a remote mountain cabin, he’s faced with a choice. He can try to corroborate the tip, obtain a lawful warrant, and search the cabin. Or he can just search the cabin without a warrant and hope his fabricated excuse for doing so holds up in court. Intent on nailing Breach, Vasquez opts to ignore the legal niceties.

The cabin, as it turns out, holds no cocaine but does feature two severed heads carefully stored in the fridge. A nearby makeshift burial ground contains the mutilated remains of nine bodies. The bloodstained operating table in the basement makes it clear that this was the work of an insane serial killer. And all but conclusive evidence points to Cardoni, a notoriously violent surgeon.

All this by Page 59, and the pace only begins to accelerate in Portland writer Phillip Margolin’s new thriller, “Wild Justice.” Margolin, who specializes in the serial-murderer-gone-amok genre, is a splendid writer. Several of his prior books have been New York Times best sellers since his 1994 best known novel, “Gone, But Not Forgotten.”

Cardoni, a spectacularly unappealing man dubbed “Dr. Death” by the tabloids, is arrested, but he protests his innocence and fingers his estranged wife, Dr. Justine Castle, as framing him. Cardoni hires top-gun criminal defense lawyer Frank Jaffe and his daughter, Amanda, who has just graduated from law school. In a showstopping hearing, Jaffe exposes Vasquez’s perfidity and wins Cardoni his freedom, much to Jaffe’s, and his daughter’s, discomfort. Cardoni swiftly disappears, leaving behind a handful of evidence indicating that he is apparently dead.

But four years later another series of disturbingly sadistic and grisly murders are discovered in a remote farm house, complete with torture notes and body parts. (Really, it’s hard to find this many severed heads and body parts for just $26.) Justine Castle is arrested at the scene and the evidence tips rather dramatically against her. She insists on her innocence and claims she’s being framed by her ex-husband. But she has a more complicated history than we’ve been let on and her defense – led by Amanda Jaffe, now a seasoned lawyer in her own right – is no cake walk. Amanda struggles to reconcile who she thinks is really guilty with her duty to defend her client.

“Wild Justice” has the gritty feel of reality, with careful and accurate descriptions of Portland-area locations, and character development that lets you feel for Amanda’s struggle to emerge from her father’s shadow, as well as her internal conflict over her duty to defend even a client who she believes is guilty. Make no mistake: this is no Grisham cutout. Margolin’s compelling writing, thoughtful plot and colorful narrative all put the best seller of the courtroom genre to shame.

Margolin is a former criminal defense attorney from Portland, and his experience shows. Virtually all of the courtroom maneuvers are accurate, which is no small trick to accomplish while at the same time maintaining an accelerating narrative velocity. But the attorney-client privilege sure takes a beating here: Amanda blabs her clients’ confidences left and right (which a lawyer is forbidden from doing). Perhaps we are to discern the errors of a new lawyer, or maybe it’s just literary license. Either way, it’s not much comfort to her clients, though, who are facing the death penalty or worse.

The book’s title is taken from a quote from Francis Bacon, quoted at the outset: “Revenge is a kind of wild justice.” And there’s certainly plenty to spread around. Justine Castle wants revenge for her brutal mistreatment by her husband during their marriage; Vincent Cardoni wants revenge against his wife for setting him up; the drug dealer Martin Breach wants revenge for a body-part sale gone awry for which he blames Cardoni; Vasquez wants revenge for a ruined career. Amid the flying accusations and counteraccusations, its hard to find a character who does not cross your mind as a suspect before you finally snap your fingers and figure it all out.

‘Personal Injuries’

by Scott Turow

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27

Scott Turow burst upon the courtroom-thriller scene in 1987 with his best-selling debut, “Presumed Innocent.” His subsequent novels each reached for the same fluid writing, thought-provoking story lines and stunning twists of his opening gambit, but each fell short in its own way.

In his dazzling new book, “Personal Injuries,” Turow returns to top form and demonstrates what makes him arguably the best courtroom novelist of our time.

“Personal Injuries” revolves around its central character, Robbie Feaver, the top personal-injury lawyer in Kindle County. Feaver, a flamboyant playboy, lavishly shows off his success with carefully tailored Italian suits, expensive sports cars and a richly appointed law office. His partner, Morton Dinnerstein, is brilliant at research and writing, but terrified of the courtroom. The two make a fearsome and winning combination, with Dinnerstein handling the law and Feaver generating the courtroom sizzle.

Feaver’s wife, Rainey, suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, a severe degenerative condition that has rendered her largely helpless and dependent on Feaver. Feaver, in turn, is dependent on the generous income from his successful practice to provide his wife with necessary and expensive technology. Caught in this bind, Feaver needs to win his cases to ensure a steady flow of cash, not only to shore up his ego but to care for his dying wife.

When the FBI discovers Feaver’s secret bank account from which he makes payments to certain Kindle County judges in return for favorable rulings, Feaver is caught in an inescapable trap. To cooperate means treason to the bench and bar of Kindle County – with possibly life-threatening consequences. But to refuse is worse: betrayal of his promise to look after Rainey as she slides into total dependency.

Trapped, Feaver becomes the pawn of Stan Sennett, the powerfully ambitious U.S. attorney who is bent on clearing the bench of Kindle County of corrupt judges and complicit lawyers. Feaver is wired and sent to work cases involving fictional plaintiffs, paying off corrupt judges and courtroom staff for favorable results, generating explosive evidence in the process that is captured on video and audiotape for the investigating federal grand jury.

To guard against betrayal, Feaver is shadowed by an undercover FBI agent who goes by the alias of Evon Miller. She poses as his new paralegal and his supposed latest in a long line of sexual conquests. Miller is conflicted in her undercover role – uncertain of her own identity to begin with, she blends in easily in the office but develops a begrudging respect for Feaver as they grapple with the inevitable ups and downs as the investigation proceeds.

The primary target of the effort is not the lower-level courtroom staff involved in the corrupt activity, but the judges themselves. In the course of the undercover operation, Feavor tapes his dealings with Sherm Crowthers, a tall, domineering African-American judge intent on getting his share of the graft that’s long been the entitlement of his white brethren; Barnett Skolnick, a dim-witted, bulbous judge awarded the job largely on account of his mob-connected brother (“Knuckles” Skolnick); and Silvio Malatesta, a bookish scholar corrupted by the system and preferring to imagine that it does not involve him. But the prosecution’s main target is the corrupt and enormously powerful presiding judge, Brendan Tuohey. But Tuohey is at least as cagey as his pursuer, and his capture is no easy task.

One might be tempted to dismiss this tale of widespread judicial corruption as implausible, but the book is in fact based on Turow’s own experience as a federal prosecutor in the famous “Operation Greylord” sting operation that resulted in the conviction of 15 Chicago judges, 49 lawyers and dozens of court personnel in the 1980s. Perhaps because of this real-life background, “Personal Injuries” features a rich texture, carefully drawn characters and a backstage pass to a fascinating sting operation in progress. But, never fear, this is no excuse for long-winded war stories. Rather, the book all but explodes down its plot line, hurling the reader along with it, until sometime – late in the night – the reader arrives at its denouement and is left staring at the ceiling, pondering the implications.

Turow’s book aptly demonstrates that life doesn’t always turn out the way one plans – whether in real life, or in undercover operations. As the final page turns, it is safe to say that no one involved in the effort gets entirely what he or she wanted, expected or deserved. No one, that is, except the reader.

‘Singing Into the Piano’

by Ted Mooney

Knopf, $25

Ted Mooney’s new novel begins with an improbable but undeniably arresting scene: A young couple attending a crowded political fund raiser engage in a conspicuous sexual act as they listen to Santiago Diaz, a former soccer hero-turned-Mexican presidential candidate, give a speech. Observing the couple from the podium, Diaz is captivated by their recklessness and struggles to complete his speech without breaking his concentration.

When the beautiful young woman leaves her purse behind, Diaz has his staff locate the couple and invites them to breakfast with him and his wife Mercedes, launching a slow-motion dance between the two couples as they are drawn toward each other for different, and not entirely clear, reasons.

Edith, a United Nations translator with a penchant for exhibitionism, and Andrew, her lawyer-boyfriend, are fascinated with the celebrity and intrigue of the fast-moving campaign. Diaz, who recognizes something of himself in Edith and her behavior, and Mercedes are at the same time intrigued by this audacious American couple.

Against a backdrop of South American environmental politics and the Mexican presidential campaign itself, the novel unfolds first in New York, later in Mexico City, and finally on the border between the two countries. Plagued by the high-level defection of the campaign manager, as well as Diaz’s disastrous appearance on an American talk show, the Diaz campaign ultimately succeeds in recovering its footing, but only at a high cost.

Edith and Andrew, standing both literally and figuratively on the border between two worlds, are confronted by violence and ambiguity that runs far deeper than they had imagined. By book’s end, both couples are left amid the wreckage of their expectations.

Mooney’s prose is at once lyrical and annoying. The dialogue is strikingly, almost disturbingly real, but this grace is undermined by the gauzy, vague progress of the novel itself.

The Diaz campaign is populated by largely undefined campaign workers clacking on laptops or whispering into cell phones, but little of this effort appears to interest or involve the candidate himself. Without a definition of the issues for which the candidate stands, or even the politics involved, the violent climax of the novel falls flat.

Moreover, Mooney’s not-so-subtle efforts to draw analogies between sex and politics, while certainly timely and thought-provoking, are incomplete and largely unexplored. “Singing Into the Piano” ultimately fails to live up to its promise, though it does offer flashing dialogue, memorable imagery and engaging writing.