Testimony

March 20, 2017
Bestseller Turow (Identical) movingly evokes the horrors of the Balkan wars in this gripping thriller that nonetheless falls short of his best work. Bill Ten Boom, the former U.S. Attorney for Illinois’s Kindle County, leaves his white-collar defense practice to take a position with the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigating a 2004 war crime. Ferko Rincic has stated that he survived an attack on his Roma community in Barupra, Bosnia, which ended with 400 men, women, and children herded into a cave that subsequently collapsed due to an explosion. Ten Boom agrees to try to verify Rincic’s account and identify those responsible for the massacre. His work brings him into contact with a femme fatale barrister from the European Roma Alliance, who located the crucial witness to the case, and a disgraced American general who commanded NATO troops in Bosnia. Yet another Turow lead suffering a midlife crisis, Ten Boom comes across more as a variation on a theme than as an original character. Author tour. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman.

March 15, 2017
An Illinois prosecutor seeks to learn who annihilated a group of refugee gypsies in Bosnia.Mega-selling author Turow turns from familiar, fictional Kindle County (read, Chicago) to treacherous Bosnia for this latest, uneven thriller. Here, in 2004, about 20 armed men herded into a cave a group of 400 Roma, or gypsies. From atop an overhang to the cave's entrance, the abductors set off explosives, causing landslides that buried the gypsies alive. Who were the perpetrators, and what were their motives? Were Serb paramilitaries behind it? Were jihadis defending Bosnian Muslims from the Serbs? Or did the American military carry out the massacre in an act more heinous than My Lai? Eleven years later, the International Criminal Court at the Hague, which tries mass atrocities, pursues the case. The ICC wants an American lawyer to prosecute, and Bill ten Boom seems the perfect choice. He has friends on -both sides of the aisle- in D.C. and a reputation that's -bulletproof.- Alas, Bill, though worth millions, is going through a male midlife crisis, which leaves a too-familiar, not very fascinating character to carry the tale. It doesn't help when Bill predictably becomes attracted to defense attorney Esma Czarni, an English barrister who is also a Roma. As they combust, Turow's prose turns purple. An -earthquake of pleasure- turns the bed they share -into a delicious, soupy mess.- Just as cliched is Turow's sense of place. En route to the gypsy campsite, Bill sees -little whitewashed houses that could have been home to Hansel and Gretel.- Bill's journey to find the culprits initially moves by fits and starts, frequently interrupted by subplots only tenuously connected to his quest. A tightly written action set piece at midpoint, in which Bill and an associate narrowly escape execution, snaps readers to attention, and Turow largely keeps them there as he moves on to a complicated, trenchant, and pertinent finish. Worth staying the course.

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May 1, 2017
Staring down a classic middle-age rut, white-collar defense attorney Bill ten Boom changes tack and takes a prosecution post with the International Criminal Court. Bill's biggest case turns on the testimony of Ferko Rincic, who claims that armed men in unidentified military uniforms executed an entire village of Roma (gypsy) refugees. No one, including American soldiers at a nearby base, has seen the Roma since the alleged attack, and Rincic's testimony is filled with credible details about Bosnia and the volatile postwar situation there. Bill's team riles governments and Bosnian paramilitaries while investigating rumors that the U.S. executed the Roma as retribution for their sabotage of the attempted arrest of Bosnia's former president for war crimes. Hampered by government secrecy, local paramilitaries, and a perplexingly uncooperative Rincic, Bill soon finds that his creates more questions than it answers. Turow applies the same storytelling magic to the ICC that has drawn scores of readers into his Kindle County courtrooms, weaving fascinating details about the challenges of prosecuting war crimes into a suspenseful story of redemption and the complexities of justice.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Turow continues to have A-list appeal, and his latest, though somewhat outside his wheelhouse, will still draw a crowd.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2016

Sometime during the cataclysmic breakup of Yugoslavia, an entire camp full of Romani refugees vanished. Was there a massacre? Burned-out Bill ten Boom accepts this one last assignment to find out. With a 300,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017

With little to go on other than the disturbing testimony of the lone survivor of an alleged massacre of 400 Roma, or "Gypsies," in a Bosnia refugee camp in 2004, Bill Ten Boom, a former Kindle County, IL, attorney now working for the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, determines to learn the truth about the night of April 27. His investigation of the cold case takes him from Holland to a Bosnian village where the Roma may have been buried alive. One thing is certain: no one has ever heard from them again. Suspicion about possible U.S. Army involvement leads Bill to Washington, DC, to meet with a former general who had been in charge during the 2004 peacekeeping maneuvers in Bosnia. When he searches for clues a little too close to the hiding place of the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, another possible suspect in the massacre, Bill ends up in a seemingly inescapable situation. VERDICT Inspired by "real world events," Turow (Presumed Innocent; Identical) crafts a complex and haunting tale of war crimes that will not only satisfy his courtroom drama devotees but also readers of international thrillers. [See Prepub Alert, 11/7/16.]--Wendy W. Paige, Shelby Cty. P.L., Morristown, IN

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.