Word: turow
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...PERSONAL INJURIES Readers have come to expect something more than gripping plots from Scott Turow's legal thrillers, and this latest offers a mesmerizing main character. Robbie Feaver, a successful lawyer who has been caught bribing judges in Kindle County, becomes a pawn in an elaborate federal scheme to trap his beneficiaries on the bench. Along the way, Turow's suspenseful story deepens into a meditation on the nature of personal loyalties and the shady space between ethics...
Robbie Feaver (pronounced favor) practices common law--the more common the better. Both cynic and self-deluding romantic, Feaver is Turow's most expansive creation. He has the needy personality of a Saul Bellow big shot and the clever mouth of an Elmore Leonard punk. Both traits come in handy when Feaver is arrested for paying off judges and decides (in about a minute and a half) that rather than go to prison, he will accept the Federal Government's deal and help cage the errant magistrates...
...setting is Turow's fictional Kindle County, the by now palpable Midwestern arena of his previous best sellers and, fairly transparently, Turow's home turf of Cook County, Ill. For proper distancing, Robbie's outlandish tale is narrated with understated sympathy by his lawyer, a squeaky-clean member of the bar who is named after his distinguished ancestor, the colonial Virginian George Mason. Robbie's foil is Evon Miller, the latest iteration of one of page and screen's most popular new types: the female FBI agent...
...match made in Hollywood heaven. Robbie, the irrepressible con man, vs. Evon (her cover name), a repressed Mormon with an Olympic bronze medal. In what sport? Don't ask. Turow seeds his story with delayed disclosures and surprises, including an inspired variation on one of dramaturgy's soundest rules: if you show a dangerous implement in the first act, it must be used in the last...
Exploring the space between legal necessity and reality's messy urgency is a Turow specialty. Street savvy and emotionally rich, Personal Injuries goes further than his earlier novels in explaining why he splits his time between satisfying clients and pleasing readers. In law there must be a deal or a judgment. In literature the jury can be hung thoughtfully between matters of head and heart...