Scott Turow takes the law seriously. Even when it comes to pastimes like TV or movies.
Turow, who invented the modern legal thriller 12 years ago with Presumed Innocent, gets up and leaves the room when his wife, Annette, watches The Practice. The popular and critically acclaimed TV show created by former fellow lawyer David E. Kelley has too many legal errors for his taste.
Law & Order, on the other hand, gets Turow’s approval because its legal procedures, though compressed, are accurate.
As for Double Jeopardy, the recent hit movie based on the premise that a woman framed for the murder of her husband has a right to kill him when she gets out of prison (she’s already been convicted, so the Constitution protects her from being tried again, right?), Turow gives a thumbs down.
“I haven’t researched this, but a crime is specifically related to a time and place,” said Turow, a longtime federal prosecutor now in private practice. “It’s certainly true you can’t be tried twice for the same crime, but this would be a separate crime. The legal premise of the movie is baloney.”
Presumably, the complicated legal maneuverings in Turow’s latest novel, Personal Injuries (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27), are accurate in every jot and tittle. Currently No. 7 on The New York Times Best Seller List, the book centers on a shady personal injury lawyer named Robbie Feavor who is pressed into service as an informant during an investigation of corrupt judges.
Turow drew on his own experiences as a prosecutor in the famed Operation Greylord case back in the 1980s, in which a number of Chicago judges were arrested, tried and convicted on charges of corruption.
“Greylord was probably the most prominent corruption case I worked,” Turow, now 50, said by phone from his home in suburban Winnetka, Ill. “It informed the book a lot, although there were key differences. Greylord involved an undercover investigation in criminal courts. Personal Injuries involves a confidential informant in civil court. Obviously this is not a one-to-one parallel.”
In fact, Turow was in charge of finding and turning a confidential informant in the Greylord case, but never succeeded.
“It was a disaster at every level,” Turow said of the attempt. “We had no Robbie Feavor.”
By the same token, Personal Injuries has no character who stands in for Scott Turow, although the author cheerfully admits that as a jest he gave many of his own lines and a number of personal characteristics to the relatively unsympathetic federal prosecutor, Stan Sennett.
“There’s a line in the book about Sennett being one of those dark, driven little men who turn up in the law,” Turow said. “Someone finally recognized the self-parody. I’m well aware he’s not a sympathetic character. It’s a but-for-the-grace-of-God kind of thing.
“Who knows, if I didn’t have the outlet of writing, I might be just like Sennett, totally absorbed in work. I have often wondered what kind of person I’d be if Presumed Innocent hadn’t happened. I’m always flattered by my wife, who believes I would not have been overcome by the temptations of the law. But I can see myself intensely driven, striving for achievements.”
Turow was always divided between his twin obsessions, writing and the law. After studying creative writing at Stanford University, he studied law at Harvard, graduating with honors. His first book, unknown by the bulk of his fans, was a nonfiction account of life among law students. Titled One L, the book has sold more than 500,000 copies.
It was while working in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in his hometown of Chicago that Turow started writing Presumed Innocent during his train commute to and from work. But the success of that first novel, made into a movie starring Harrison Ford, never tempted Turow to give up the practice of law.
“I guess I like being a lawyer,” said Turow, who works part-time as a partner in his old law firm. “There are definitely tedious aspects of lawyering, but there are still lawyering tasks I like a lot. I still enjoy the courtroom. I like the overall purpose of the law, even though it’s often frustrated. Attempts to do justice still seem to me to be really noble.”
Turow said that over the course of his five internationally best-selling novels, he has sought to write simpler and more direct books. For example, he intended Personal Injuries to be a straightforward tale.
“At least that’s what I was trying to do,” Turow said. “Unfortunately, Robbie Feavor turned out to be an almost enigmatically complex human being. Simplifying has never been one of my great strengths, either as a lawyer or a writer.”
That may be one of Turow’s greatest assets as a novelist. While Personal Injuries is needlessly complicated in the way it’s told — through the reminiscences of a character not central to the action — Turow’s penchant for seeing layers lends the narrative a moral weight and a psychological complexity not often present in legal thrillers.
It’s the chief trait that garners Turow serious critical assessment and praise, and results in his books being considered mainstream novels rather than genre pulp like the work of his competitor, the phenomenally successful John Grisham.
For years, it has been whispered in the publishing world that Turow fears and resents Grisham, who came along after Presumed Innocent and, by dint of simple plot lines and cardboard characters, far exceeded Turow in mass popularity.
Turow laughs at the suggestion that he and Grisham are in competition.
“I’m sure John would like to have my reviews, and I would certainly like to have his sales figures,” Turow said. “But the truth is, it’s proven to be a pretty good deal for both of us.”
Chauncey Mabe can be reached at or 954-356-4710.
