Books like The Burden of Proof

Following the simultaneous written and cinematic success of its predecessor, "Presumed Innocent," Scott Turow again returns to Kindle County for another dramatic exploration of the emotional vagaries of lives wrapped in the curious legal subculture of American society. In Turow's "Burden of Proof," we find ourselves three years following the events of "Presumed Innocent" as a spectator in the life of Sandy Stern, the attorney who famously defended Rusty Sabich in the murder trial from the prior story.This time, there is no murder, but there is a death; the suicide of Sandy's wife, Clara, mated to a seemingly inexplicable withdrawal from her personal trust fund just days before her death. Her death and the unexplained financial transaction leave Stern with more questions than answers, holding fast only to the too-vivid memory of his having discovered the deceased Clara in their garage. Amid Stern's personal tragedy unfolds the increasing encroachment of the legal issues surrounding one of his more problematic clients, Dixon Hartnell, a man of decidely questionable ethics, owner of a large investment corporation, and married to Silvia, one of Stern's sisters. His employment of Stern's son-in-law John, married to daughter Kate, as a floor trader at the Kindle exchange doesn't make things any simpler.Amid the ever tightening circle of influence that an unfolding scandal around Hartnell reveals is the introspection that Clara's death forces on Stern, one wherein he tries to assess his distance as a husband and father, and how his skill at matters of law institutionalized that distance to the point of distraction, creating flawed relationships, incomplete perspectives of his own family, and, ultimately, a troubling picture of himself. He sees himself idealized too much by his other sister, Marta, and fundamentally alienated from his son, Peter, a successful physician. Turow orchestrates an articulately choreographed dance among Stern's family, his neighbors, and the professional peers into a narrative that deviates from its tightly defined story in only a few places. There is little wasted motion, and correspondingly few wasted characters. From the representatives of the US attorney's office that involve themselves in Hartnell's issues, to the office flunkies that manage his company's trading operations, to the neighbors more involved with Sandy following Clara's death, each is woven with a credible and important role in "Burden of Proof."Turow draws his characters with sculptor-like precision and insight, with the cognitive depth of a high-resolution mental camera. As one might contrast his writing style with that of John Grisham's typically brisk pacing, Turow's is methodical, deliberate, and purposeful, articulating the finest detail from the subtlest nuance. If Grisham is the quick pacing of a staccato offering, Turow's is the legato counterpart. Even ancillary characters are richly conceived, even if they are nothing more than secondary to the plot, and the richness strengthens the novel's reality with each page.For all of Turow's literary excellence, however, comes a distasteful tempering. Turow holds nothing back in the narrative in describing (among others) Stern's personal exploits as a newly single man among multiple female encounters. The description, in the abstract, is understandable as character exposition, but the lurid depths to which Turow sinks in his narrative grossly tarnishes the broader epic with details better left to magazines rightly delivered in plain brown wrappers. The vulgarity and crassness with which Turow communicates these wholly unnecessary details belies his obvious skill with and mastery of the written word. Where "Burden of Proof" was my first Turow novel, this issue alone serves as a primary reason it may well be my last. While the narrative of "Burden of Proof" is efficient, it isn't without flaw. Midway through the text, Stern's younger-days courtship of Clara and his edgy relationship with her father are interwoven in flashback. As the latter third of the novel unfolds, these flashbacks become intrusive and needlessly break the narrative momentum as the story progresses to its conclusion. Moreover, Turow waits almost too long to move the story into a higher gear, as Stern's sexual escapades and neighborly intrusions push "Proof" perilously close to the border of soap opera, right down to the details of discussions had over privet-hedge trimming."Burden of Proof" is, at times, a masterfully woven story of personal insight, of a man arriving too late to his own midlife crisis, forced to construct for himself a new future and a new reality beset by unfathomable circumstances and a confluence of malevolence from his own family. Exceedingly raw sexual content, too much early lethargy, and a frustrating mixture of backstory told in retrospect amid the advancing narrative darkens and diminishes the mastery. And that's nothing less than a shame.