Scott Turow redefined the legal thriller by portraying the law as a means of pressure rather than principle.
The former US trial lawyer-turned author, known for his blockbuster 1987 debut Presumed Innocent, which spawned a trilogy and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, explains that the American justice system, with its narrow burden of proof, has a way of pushing people on both sides of the courtroom to their limits.
“I view it as a system of pressure,” he tells The National ahead of his appearance at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, which begins on Wednesday. “It presses characters, forces them into decisions and accelerates events. Against that pressure, you have the emotional lives of the people involved and that tension is what interests me.”
It sounds almost Shakespearean, but when Turow, 76, emerged, the legal novel was rarely interested in that kind of emotional fallout. “It really was not a recognised category at that time,” Turow says.
“There were great books about legal cases. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee, of course, in many ways is exactly that, a legal thriller. And there was another trial novel, Anatomy of a Murder, a huge bestseller in 1958 and the novelist was John Voelker, a Michigan appellate court judge, who, because of his judicial position, published the book under the pen name Robert Traver.
“I greatly admired the book, but it seemed to me to descend from the tradition of the hard-boiled noir fiction hero who had little to say about his feelings, which was a far cry from what seemed essential to the books I was writing.”
Presumed Innocent seemed familiar enough: it begins with a murder, a prosecutor accused and a trial that promised answers. What distinguished it was not the case itself but the narrator, Rusty Sabich, a career prosecutor who recalls his experiences with a confidence that slowly gives way to doubt, self-justification and emotional blindness, even as the legal process grinds towards a resolution.
By the time the verdict arrives, the emotional damage is done, and it overshadows the outcome of the trial.
That emphasis on what survives the verdict has shaped not only Turow’s work ever since, but also influenced a generation of future novelists, including John Grisham and David Baldacci.
“Every one of my books is essentially a family drama, because families are far more complicated than the law can ever be,” Turow says.
“If all you are going to do is focus on the legal and not the emotional aspects of a story, then you are going to constantly confront the limitations of the law. But by exploring what it does to families and individuals, it gets more complicated in terms of the actual relationships. That’s because it stands in contrast to the logic of the legal system, which goes from point A to point B and says, ‘This is the rule.’”
Turow says this plays out every day in legal cases, both big and small. What it exposes is how moral certainty begins to fracture once it is embedded within a family structure.
That thinking carries through last year’s Presumed Guilty, the third instalment following Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof (1992), in which Sabich, now in his mid-seventies, is drawn back into court to defend his future son-in-law in a murder trial.
Of course, by now the initial thrills and unsettling nature of Turow’s ground-breaking novels may no longer surprise, but there is still much to enjoy in his mastery of wrapping up a complex case in a lucid narrative and brisk pacing.
Then again, he has never viewed himself as the father of the legal thriller. Instead, he attributes that success to a broader shift in American popular culture at the time.
“On television, you had drama series like LA Law, which the creator David E Kelley went on to describe as not ‘a law show but a greed show’. Then you had Court TV, which began broadcasting trials live. That created a peculiar change in the US,” he says.
“The television cowboy was out and the spy became a less prominent figure because of the fall of the Berlin Wall, so lawyers became the new heroes because they were in the midst of all the drama playing out in American society. So I didn’t invent the cultural change, and I wasn’t aware of it until the book really became an astronomical success.”
That sustained interest has seen his work repeatedly adapted for the screen, beginning with the blockbuster 1990 film Presumed Innocent, starring Harrison Ford, which grossed more than $200 million worldwide. Other adaptations include The Burden of Proof (1992), a television mini-series starring Brian Dennehy, and television movies Reversible Errors (2004), led by William H Macy.
The latest remake of Presumed Innocent brought the story full circle with last year’s Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series starring Jake Gyllenhaal and created by LA Law’s Kelley.
An interesting aspect of both projects is that both Turow and Kelley are former lawyers who were frustrated by the grind of their day jobs. Kelley would go on to shape legal television dramas with series including The Practice and Ally McBeal.
When it comes to advising those hoping to make a similar transition, Turow is direct with his guidance.
“My advice is pretty easy because it has always been the same. If you think you have something to write, you have to write it. You have to put your butt in the chair and do it, and accept that it’s hard work,” he says.
“When I was writing Presumed Innocent, I was struggling too. I would write on the morning commuter train and often on Sunday night after my family was in bed. I would start the week short of two hours of sleep, but I was doing it, and it mattered to me. At the end of the day, you’re not going to be a writer without writing.”
