March 13: Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

Summary

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, is often proclaimed as a breakthrough novel in the genre of courtroom dramas or mysteries. Hailed as the most suspenseful and compelling novel in decades, Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare:  that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes.

Published in 1987, it was the first novel by Turow, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and it does venture well outside the action-driven plotting of much genre fiction.

As the book opens, an election is underway for prosecuting attorney in the fictional Kindle County. The chief deputy prosecuting attorney is Rusty Sabich, the book's protagonist and narrator. He is quickly sketched as talented, intelligent, and nobody's fool, yet loyal to his boss, Raymond Horgan, who is running for reelection. Horgan is drawn as a sharp and self-interested politician but also a highly capable attorney, which Rusty admires. They have worked together for twelve years. Rusty has a wife, Barbara, and a young son, Nat. He loves them both but is having difficulties with his wife, especially since Rusty's affair with a coworker, Carolyn Polhemus, who now has been murdered apparently by a rapist.

Major Characters

Rozat K. "Rusty" Sabich is the novel's main character and narrator. A highly successful lawyer of about forty years old, he is chief deputy prosecuting attorney of Kindle County when the novel opens. Rusty is a very bright and logical thinker who has a twelve-year history of putting miscreants behind bars for the state.

Carolyn Polhemus is the novel's murder victim. She is more than forty years old, but remains extraordinarily beautiful in a rather stereotypical way with a buxom and fit figure and a cascade of golden hair. She is intelligent and capable in her job as a deputy prosecuting attorney, but her ambitions to ascend in the hierarchy lead her toward initiating sexual relationships with several powerful men in the legal profession.

Raymond Horgan, the county's prosecuting attorney, is Rusty's boss when the novel opens. Horgan is big, bluff, and canny. He projects a powerful sense of presence. 

Barbara Bernstein is Rusty's wife and the mother of their son. Like many other characters in this novel, Barbara is unusually intelligent. A mathematics whiz, she goes back to college after the birth of her son to get a doctorate in math. 

Alejandro "Sandy" Stern is Rusty's defense attorney. An Argentinian Jew and a Spanish gentlemen, he is elegant, erudite, courtly, soft-spoken, and beautifully manicured. Physically, he is short, roundish, and balding.  In court, he seems to concentrate as much on figuring out the psychology of a witness as he does on the facts themselves.

Dan "Lip" Lipranzer is a police officer and Rusty Sabich's friend and co-investigator. He is an upstanding cop, with no time for colleagues who are bullies, bigots, or on the take.

 Larren Lyttle is the presiding judge at Rusty's trial. A former partner in a law firm with Raymond Horgan, he remains one of Horgan's best friends. Lyttle is a large black man with a face full of guile and majesty.

Nico "Delay" Della Guardia is the lawyer who wins an election early in the novel to become the county's prosecuting attorney. He earned his nickname early in his career, because he could never complete a brief on time.

 Tommy Molto, another deputy prosecutor, is Nico Della Guardia's righthand man. A former seminarian, he is nicknamed the Mad Monk around the office.

 Tatsuo "Painless" Kumagai is the county's inept pathologist 

Additional Characters

 Jamie Kemp

 Lionel Kenneally

 Tom Glendenning

 Leon Wells

 Nat Sabich

 Marty Polhemus

 Miles Robinson

 Lydia MacDougall

 Augustine Bolcarro

 Maurice Dickerman

 Mrs. Krapotnik

 Maybell Beatrice

 Eugenia Martinez

 Wendell McGaffen

 Guerash

 Lou Balistrieri