Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy

Graham Adams, Jr., is a professor of American history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

Murder mysteries and sensational criminal trials have always fascinated
the fiction-reading public. Scott Turow, whose novels deal with the
complexities of crime, law, and ethics, ranks among the most popular
authors within this category. Biographer Derek Lundy attributes
Turow’s success to his writing talent and his knowledge of law.
Turow’s One L, an account of his experiences at Harvard Law School,
became a classic among law students. Turow’s experiences in Chicago as
Assistant U.S. District Attorney (he participated in an extensive
federal investigation of corruption in the Illinois courts) served as
the inspiration for his first major novel, Presumed Innocent. In
Lundy’s view, Turow is not simply another formula writer churning out
potboilers; rather, he is a novelist who has taken the literary
detective story as expressed by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett
and transformed it into a legal thriller. Turow’s books will never
rank as enduring literature, but they will stand as the products of a
superior craftsman.