Presumed Innocent

⚖The case for it

A prosecutor is charged with the murder of a colleague with whom he was having an affair. Turow, a real lawyer, brought procedural authenticity, moral complexity, and genuine literary craft to the legal thriller, essentially defining the genre in 1987. The ending remains one of the most shocking in crime fiction.

— the canon

✕The case against

Rusty narrates in first person while withholding what a first-person narrator would know, and whether that twist plays fair is a real question. Carolyn exists only as the men's obsession, an ambitious corpse. Turow's prose turns violet whenever sex or guilt enters the room. Between the courtroom set pieces, the pace belongs to depositions.

— the honest librarian