Scott Turow is brilliant, which is why I can't understand shy he writes some drivel (like this book, for instance). The plot is so thin that the story could be told in 1/5th of the time. The book is simply chockfull of ambience - i.e. the "hero's" thoughts and meandering actions. By the time I got to the conclusion I just didn't care about the who-did-what. Unless you love endless digression, avoid this book.

I confess, I heard the audio book version. It was pretty interesting, and well read by Stacey Keach. But I think Mack should have given the money back, in the end. He said he'd be drinking heavily again, even with his millions of dollars. I can see why: his conscience would never be clean. Well, it's only fiction, right? Diximus.

For some reason, John Grisham continues to be the hugest name in the "legal thriller" business, when that honor ought to be firmly in the grasp of Scott Turow. His books have more "meat on the bone," dabble in moral ambiguity more instead of having such clearly delineated good guys / bad guys, and are written in a more literate style. Grisham's characters are sketched in quickly and seldom grow and change. He's like the lawyer's version of Michael Crichton, all plot and no heart.

By shear coincidence, this was really driven home to me when I first read THE PARTNER, by Grisham, which tells the story of a lawyer who steals a huge amount of money from his shady law partners and disappears with it. It's a fun STORY with many amusing touches, but never makes you truly care for the characters. I followed this read immediately with PLEADING GUILTY, which also dealt with some shady attorneys being ripped off big-time by one of their partners.

The main character is Mack Malloy, an ex-cop turned lawyer, who is grappling with raising on his own a VERY troubled teenage boy and is also a recovering alcoholic right on the edge of no longer recovering. He's a smart attorney but not a terribly productive one for his firm, and he's given the job of tracking down his fellow partner who is suspected of raiding a company settlement fund of millions and disappearing. Mack begins to investigate, and he peels of layer after layer of secrets and surprises...off his firm, off their #1 client, off the local police force and even from his friend, the disappeared lawyer.

Told in the first person, the character of Mack is flawed but totally engaging. And when I say "flawed," I don't mean a little. He's a hard guy to like, but his narrative style is so incisive and his sadness so profound, he gets our sympathy. He (meaning author Turow) is also a very astute observer of character and through his eyes, we get to know a lot of very interesting and varied people. This book really had me turning the pages.

My only gripe is the conclusion. The plot gets twisted enough that when Mack finally gets to "reveal all" it takes a good long time to set us straight on what has happened and why. Turow also assumes that we care more than we do about a couple of the more minor characters in the book, and this slows the ending down a bit too. By no means do these minor flaws make this a book not worth reading though...I was sorry to leave Mack behind.

Turow first came to real national attention with his stellar PRESUMED INNOCENT. But I've read several of his subsequent books, and they are all rock solid. Grisham is like a burger, fast and filling but not all that good for you. Turow, to me, is more like nice, slow steak dinner...satisfying and worth lingering over. Give him a try! ...

In this plot the author identifies himself with Malloy, a timid copper turned attorney. While rowing through the pages you find yourself to be lost in a vast ocean with very little intrigue, while the author dabbles in extensive introspection. Every good plot needs a villain. Meet Pigeyes the notorious comrade from the past. When crossing the equator of this bestseller, I was still in the doldrums hoping for a storm but the story continued to splash along with more introspection. There are a few scenes strewn throughout for laughing out loud, for which I gratefully bestow an extra star. While my mind wandered and Malloy was having another drink, I was rowing on `til the end: "There are only victims." Yes, the ones who think that this book meets the burden of proof to justify its existence. Gerborg

Mack Molloy is a burnt-out civil lawyer who has slaved for much of his life at the dying law firm of G&G. Told entirely from Molloy's POV, the story begins when Molloy is told by the three attorneys of the firm's executive committee that one of its partners - the brash and daring Bert Kamins - has disappeared along with over 5 million dollars of the firm's money. The money was part of an escrow account set up to pay out a settlement in a class action suit brought against G&G's biggest client and stemming from a horrific airliner crash. The fact of the loss, if revealed to the airline/client - without whom, G&G's collapse is assured - requires that somebody locate both Kamins and the money ASAP. With his background as a former cop and his experience as a financial crimes investigator, Molloy seems the best candidate for the job of turning up both attorney and cash. Below the surface (and not that deeply either) Molloy presents a better candidate - he's the firm's least productive attorney: a recovering alcoholic (he did better when he drank); failed father and husband, disgraced ex-cop (Molloy testified against a veteran detective to save his own skin, then poisoned both sides against him when his testimony bungled the prosecution.) and all about middle-aged wreck. In other words, he's the best guy to have around to explain why neither money nor Kamins were ever found.

This was a great Turow book - better than "Burden of Proof" though still not as coherent as "Presumed Innocent". Though its title uses a familiar legal phrase, "Pleading" is less about the law or litigation than about people who happen to be lawyers. As in those other books, Turow is a master of constructing characters who are both very real and have a very convincing capacity to analyze each other. As in the other books, the accent is on the failings of the characters. An intricate plot relies on our own weaknesses: the mystery seems to get bigger and more complicated, though the climax shows that the reverse is true - the mystery gets more simple, and we learn that the various clues point to smaller conspiracies separate from each other. Where the plot bogs down is handling its cast of legal rogues - especially the head lawyers of G&G who occupy different areas of the spectra of respectability, morality and greed. (Turow introduces them as a group, though never makes the transition to treating them as real individuals until Molloy finds he must play them each against each other) There's a beautiful and brilliant attorney named "Brushy" who - though no stranger to Molloy - suddenly surprises him by revealing her infatuation for him. Molloy must also deal with Detective Gino Dimonte, a financial crimes investigator whose career Molloy ruined years earlier - nicknamed "Pigeyes", Dimonte was the detective whom Molloy testified against. Then there's Molloy himself. Though the story's narrator, Molloy springs the biggest surprise on us. We're supposed to think that he'll rise above it all despite his weaknesses (which are profound). Instead, and without giving up too much, he rises above it all because of them. The details of the embezzlement that kicks off the story are pretty complicated (if you read "Burden", think of the wheat futures deal), but that won't keep you from getting into the story or the characters.