Limitations

October 2, 2006
The latest offering from legal thriller master Turow began life as a serial story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine
and won't be mistaken, even by devoted fans, for his finest work. As with his previous novels, the action centers on the fictional Kindle County in Illinois, and he revives some familiar characters, including George Mason from Personal Injuries
and Rusty Sabich, the hero of his acclaimed fiction debut, Presumed Innocent
. Mason is now an appellate judge, faced with the challenge of crafting the decision in a high-profile case involving a sexual assault that reawakens his long-suppressed guilt over his role in a similar incident decades before. To compound his inner turmoil, Mason finds himself the object of threatening e-mails from an unknown source. While Turow's writing is assured as ever, the plot and the legal dilemmas interwoven into it aren't up to his usual high standards, and whodunit fans who loved the brilliant twist that highlighted his debut are likely to be disappointed by the mystery's resolution.

November 1, 2006
Kindle County Appellate Judge George Mason, previously seen in Personal Injuries, is having a bad week. His wife has just been diagnosed with cancer, he's receiving mysterious, threatening emails, and he's troubled by the case before him, which has stirred unpleasant memories from his past. A young woman was drugged and unconscious when she was brutally raped by four college students, who videotaped every humiliating detail. Upon awakening, she's not completely sure what happened and pushes it out of her mind until several years later, when the videotape resurfaces. The young men are subsequently convicted, but the case has come before the appellate court because it appears that the statute of limitations was ignored. This expanded version of a Sunday serial originally published in the New York Times Magazine earlier this year is written in the present tense, which lends a sense of immediacy to the events, but there is a real lack of suspense and virtually no surprises. Buy this unusually low-key legal thriller from the creator of the genre for demand only.Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2006
This slim volume appeared in the " New York Times "as a magazine serial in 2006. Although some new material has been added, it still lacks the heft and depth of a full-fledged Turow novel. Even as a novella, it's top-heavy with legal procedure and courtroom scheduling minutiae that would better fit the scope and pacing of a much longer work. However, even Turow Lite delivers a fairly good read. Former criminal defense attorney George Mason (readers will recognize him, as well as the Kindle County setting, from " Personal Injuries," 1999) has been comfortably ensconced for almost a decade as a judge on the Court of Appeals. But a case is resurrected that disturbs him in ways that are both perfectly explicable and unfathomable to him. In 1999, four high-school ice-hockey players, all white, videotaped their gang rape of a drugged 15-year-old black girl at a party. The videotape didn't come to light until 2003; a conviction followed, which is now under appeal. The case is horrific in itself; it becomes more frightening to Mason as long-buried shards from his past start troubling him. Add to this a psychotic who keeps threatening him and the fact that his wife has been diagnosed with cancer, and you have one very fragile judge. An intriguing premise, buried under legal procedure that seems tacked on.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)