Reversible Errors
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

Turow takes on the death-penalty controversy in his latest legal thriller and places complex characters on both sides of the issue, battling over a thorny, convoluted case. In 1991, three people were brutally murdered in a Kindle County diner. Prosecutor Muriel Wynn and detective Larry Starczek ferreted out Rommy Gandolf, who soon confessed to the crime. Ten years later, Rommy is on death row, just weeks away from his execution. Arthur Raven has been appointed as his lawyer, but he can't imagine that anything new will turn up despite Rommy's claims of innocence. Then Erno Erdai steps forward. Serving a 10-year sentence for assault and dying of cancer, Erno claims that he, not Rommy, committed the murders in the diner. Arthur is skeptical at first, but he wants to believe in his client, so soon he is pushing the case forward with all his might. Muriel and Larry are incensed, certain that, despite Erno's claims, Rommy is guilty. Gillian Sullivan, the judge who heard Rommy's case and sentenced him, is reluctantly drawn back into the legal wrangling. Turow does an excellent job of balancing the twists and turns of the case with his characters' equally complicated personal lives and relationships, making for a well-rounded, exciting, introspective thriller. --Kristine Huntley

The sixth novel from bestseller Turow is a big book about little people in big trouble, involving the death penalty (one of the author's real-life legal specialties), procedural foul-ups and a cast of characters who exemplify the adage about good intentions paving the road to hell. Arthur Raven (a middle-aged, undistinguished lawyer taking care of a schizophrenic sister in a suburb of Chicago) lands a career-making case: the 11th-hour appeal of a quasi-retarded death row inmate, Rommy "Squirrel" Gandolph (accused of triple homicide a decade earlier), on new testimony by a terminally ill convict. Muriel Wynn, an ambitious prosecutor, and Larry Starczek, the detective who originally worked the case, are Raven's adversaries. Plot thickener: Wynn and Starczek are engaged in a longstanding, tortuous, off-again, on-again affair (both being unhappily married) that predates the crime, and which may have indirectly influenced the course of the original investigation. Arthur pulls in the original presiding judge from the case, Gillian Sullivan, just emerging from her own prison stretch for bribery (which masks an even darker secret) to assist him on the case, which leads to another tortuous affair on the defense's side. On top of this (Turow is well known for his many-layered narratives) is the dynamic among the criminals themselves: the dying con may be covering up for his wayward nephew, further muddying the legal waters. The first part of the book, which flips back and forth between the original investigation (1991) and the new trial (2001), is structurally the most demanding, but it is vital to the way in which Turow makes Rommy's case (as well as Arthur's and Muriel's). No character in this novel is entirely likable; all seek to undo some past wrong, with results that get progressively worse. Turow fans should not be disappointed; nor should his publisher. (Nov. 1) Forecast: Turow is the class act of legal thriller writers and he sells books. A long stint on the bestseller list is predicted for his latest, which will be issued in a 750,000 first printing. Seven-city author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In Turow's latest novel, read by J.R. Horne, Rommy Gandolph is on his final appeal before his execution for a murder he says he didn't commit. Arthur Raven, Rommy's court-appointed lawyer, delves into the ten-year-old case searching for evidence to free his client. However, prosecuting attorney Muriel Wynn originally prosecuted Rommy and has no intention of seeing him escape execution. In addition, Muriel and Larry Starczek, the detective who handled the case, may have cut corners to obtain the conviction. This fact may hurt the prosecutor's future political ambitions, and Rommy's criminal past does not help his chances. The author's plot is fast paced, with enough turns to hold the listener's interest. More importantly, he has created a collection of complex characters who are as engaging as the story. Highly recommended for all collections.-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ., Parkersburg (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A final appeal from Death Row reopens a decade-old murder case as the world's preeminent legal novelist (Personal Injuries, 1999, etc.) proves once again why his grasp of the moral dimensions of legal problems sets the gold standard for the genre. The cops in Turow's home turf of Kindle County had no trouble solving the Fourth of July Massacre ten years ago because Romeo Gandolph "confessed to everybody but the Daily Planet," as his court-appointed appellate attorney Arthur Raven tells his junior associate Pamela Towns. But now, weeks from execution, Rommy's changed his story. Instead of pleading insanity to the shooting of popular restaurant owner Gus Leonidis and two customers, the acknowledged thief and fence suddenly insists he didn't do it. And improbable, nearly imperceptible cracks begin to appear in the mountain of evidence that aggressive prosecutor Muriel Wynn and her lover Larry Starczek, the lead detective on the case, amassed against Rommy. The DA's office, eager to keep their files tidy, never questioned key witnesses, came up with questionable forensics of one of the victims, and overlooked the possibility that Rommy may already have been in custody when the gun went off. This time around, as Arthur realizes, there's another defendant besides Rommy: Gillian Sullivan, the judge who found him guilty and sentenced him to death before her own conviction and sentence for bribery. Working with Gillian's unwilling help, Arthur manages to get a confession from a long-unsuspected source. Fans of Turow, however, will see this second confession as no more reliable than the first-except as a device to strip away still more layers of deception from troubled characters desperate to break the fragile alliances they were desperate to form. No car chases, explosions, threats against the detective, movie-star locations, or gourmet meals: just a deeply satisfying novel about deeply human people who just happen to be victims, schemers, counselors-at-law, or all three at once. First printing of 750,000; author tour

A lawyer reviewing the case of a client on death row who claims to be innocent of a brutal killing finds unexpected support for his case when another prisoner takes the blame. Attorney-author Turow is a master at guiding readers through intricate, behind-the-scenes legal tangles and giving insights into the characters' complex lives. Horne's straightforward, detached reading keeps control of the story as it moves from past to present. Through his interpretation, Horne makes the grim details of the murders more palatable and sustains the plot's building tension. Candace Smith Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews

A lawyer reviewing the case of a client on death row who claims to be innocent of a brutal killing finds unexpected support for his case when another prisoner takes the blame. Attorney-author Turow is a master at guiding readers through intricate, behind-the-scenes legal tangles and giving insights into the characters' complex lives. Horne's straightforward, detached reading keeps control of the story as it moves from past to present. Through his interpretation, Horne makes the grim details of the murders more palatable and sustains the plot's building tension. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.