05:57 PM
Books REVIEW | Reversible Errors by Scott Turow

I'm finding this book hard to get into, it's peopled with characters that I'm not finding sympathetic and I can't connect to, I had a similar problem with some of the characters in his previous book but it's even worse in this one. It reminds me of John Grisham's The Brethren which featured three repulsive, unredeemable, just plain icky characters and I found myself bored and grossed out from beginning to end and resolved never to read another of his books again.

Up thru The Laws of the Fathers, Turow's books have been terrific, even when the character was the bad guy, there was still something there that I could understand and connect with but his last book, Personal Injuries, there was much that was good, but some of it was just...not right. The FBI agent was two-dimensional, stiff and unbelievable, with the backstory of being a former Olympian that seemed a rather pointless thing to add to the character.

And that seems to have inhabited much of the characters in his latest book, Reversible Errors. Most of the characters are stiff and brittle, with perhaps the exception of the police detective and perhaps the female former judge/now ex-con but her character is so similar to the female prosecutor with some minor differences in their backstory, that it's sometimes difficult to tell them apart.

In the past, the murder has usually not been the central point of his books, it was almost incidental, a pivot used to reveal the characters and their lives. In Errors, the murder is much more central, it's much more a murder mystery than his previous books have been and that's not why I read his books.

Perhaps he's on the downward slide, I find most authors hit a high point and then go back down from there, either just writing badly or constantly repeating themselves. But all his earlier books were very good, so read those, here they are in order of my preference:

The Laws of Our Fathers
When I first started this book, I thought I wasn't going to like it, but the further I got into it, the better it got till it became my favorite of his books. It's long, over 500 pages and it spans most of the last half of the 20th century but really excellent reading.

Pleading Guilty
This one's short and the ending caught me by surprise, not at all what I expected, wonderfully crafted narration by the main character.

The Burden of Proof
This one is a marvelous exploration of a marriage and family, it was made into a mini-series which just couldn't quite capture all the internal dialogue of the characters, but I did think that Hector Elizondo was perfect for the part of the main character.

Presumed Innocent
His first book, made into a big screen movie with Harrison Ford, but again so much of the book is internal dialogue that the movie couldn't quite capture as well. It's a very good murder mystery as well as a marvellous examination of the characters.

Personal Injuries
Not as good as the others, but still very good and some twists in the plot I didn't expect.