Limitations

A Picador Paperback Original From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent comes a compelling new legal mystery featuring George Mason from Personal Injuries . Originally commissioned and published by The New York Times Magazine, this edition contains additional material. Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason. His days as a criminal defense lawyer are long behind him. At fifty-nine, he has sat as a judge on the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet, when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. What is troubling George Mason so deeply? Is it his wife's recent diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening e-mails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific case of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge? In Limitations, Scott Turow, the master of the legal thriller, returns to Kindle County with a page-turning entertainment that asks the biggest questions of all. Ingeniously, and with great economy of style, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law but of human understanding itself. From Publishers Weekly The latest offering from legal thriller master Turow began life as a serial story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine and won't be mistaken, even by devoted fans, for his finest work. As with his previous novels, the action centers on the fictional Kindle County in Illinois, and he revives some familiar characters, including George Mason from Personal Injuries and Rusty Sabich, the hero of his acclaimed fiction debut, Presumed Innocent . Mason is now an appellate judge, faced with the challenge of crafting the decision in a high-profile case involving a sexual assault that reawakens his long-suppressed guilt over his role in a similar incident decades before. To compound his inner turmoil, Mason finds himself the object of threatening e-mails from an unknown source. While Turow's writing is assured as ever, the plot and the legal dilemmas interwoven into it aren't up to his usual high standards, and whodunit fans who loved the brilliant twist that highlighted his debut are likely to be disappointed by the mystery's resolution. (Nov.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist This slim volume appeared in the New York Times as a magazine serial in 2006. Although some new material has been added, it still lacks the heft and depth of a full-fledged Turow novel. Even as a novella, it's top-heavy with legal procedure and courtroom scheduling minutiae that would better fit the scope and pacing of a much longer work. However, even Turow Lite delivers a fairly good read. Former criminal defense attorney George Mason (readers will recognize him, as well as the Kindle County setting, from Personal Injuries , 1999) has been comfortably ensconced for almost a decade as a judge on the Court of Appeals. But a case is resurrected that disturbs him in ways that are both perfectly explicable and unfathomable to him. In 1999, four high-school ice-hockey players, all white, videotaped their gang rape of a drugged 15-year-old black girl at a party. The videotape didn't come to light until 2003; a conviction followed, which is now under appeal. The case is horrific in itself; it becomes more frightening to Mason as long-buried shards from his past start troubling him. Add to this a psychotic who keeps threatening him and the fact that his wife has been diagnosed with cancer, and you have one very fragile judge. An intriguing premise, buried under legal procedure that seems tacked on. Connie Fletcher Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved ϡ쯦랠 Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason. His days as a criminal defence lawyer are long behind him. At fifty-nine, he has sat as a judge on the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet, when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. What is troubling George Mason so deeply? Is it his wife's recent diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening emails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific case of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge? In Limitations , Scott Turow, the master of the legal thriller, returns to Kindle County with a page-turning entertainment that asks the biggest questions of all. Ingeniously, and with great economy of style, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law, but of human understanding itself.