Rusty Sabich saunters into the sunset

INTIMACY is one of the greatest joys two people can share. A crumbling marriage can hardly be considered a delight – yet many couples will spend more time and energy unravelling their marriage than in the part in which the ecstasies of the flesh prevail.

That insight is not mine. It comes from the staggering train of thought of Rusty Sabich, the tainted protagonist in Presumed Guilty. The title and Sabich's name should ring bells. This is the third novel in which Scott Turow chronicles Sabich's epic path through the American courts.

In 1987, we gained – and lost – respect for him in Presumed Innocent. The advocate of justice and immoral bedroom shenanigans. That novel revolutionised publishing – it revived the courtroom drama and dragged a host of procedural and highly tense narratives in its wake. The film version, starring Harrison Ford and Greta Scacchi, was equally huge.

It's a genre with built-in pitfalls – Turow had to improve on the high level set by Robert Traver (pseudonym of John D. Voelker) with Anatomy of a Murder (1958).

Turow followed up Presumed Innocent with a series of books that confirmed his legal brilliance, and increasingly raised questions about his writing. He balances what seem like simple stories with complicated legal procedures. His characters tend to explain themselves. Somewhere Turow has to find a place for the juridical theme, right? They tend to convey messages on behalf of the author. No rule against it, just as long as it's done with finesse.

With Innocent (2010), the second Sabich novel, Turow continued his contemplation of holy matrimony. Sabich has progressed to appeal court judge since 1987, where his old enemy, Adv. Tommy Molto, repeatedly brings Sabich's honourability under suspicion after the suicide of his wife. When everything is settled, Sabich understands that he will only be able to analyse his broken marriage when he understands himself. And that understanding still lies far into the future. “Nearly four decades on, I still have no clear idea what it was I wanted from her so deeply, so intensely, that it bound me to her against all reason.”

Does that realisation come in Presumed Guilty? A decade and a half after his wife's death, Sabich moved from Kindle County to Skageon, somewhere northeast of Chicago. His problem this time? He must prove the son of his youngest fiancée, Bea, is not guilty of murdering a girlfriend.

I describe the story in a deliberately vague way. Presumed Guilty is a tour de force compared to Innocent – the same punch and intensity that Presumed Innocent had in 1987. Turow climbs into Sabich's head and stumbles upon uncomfortable things. Sabich is now 76, and doesn't really want to deal with the horrors of humanity anymore, but he'll do anything for Bea's love.

One has to assume that the insights Sabich reaches at the end of this story reflect Turow's feelings in a way. The author is a staunch opponent of the death penalty. But now a killer tells Sabich the administration of justice is “just talk and pretty thoughts". Sabich can't refute that. You know that among his people and in his profession the writer has lost heart.

The irony! That one should end such an intricate story on that note. It's not just chatter and cajolery – a humongous mind conceived and wrote this story. The characters may be too prone to theorising, but wasn't this a stylistic flaw that Turow already had with his first novel?

I sincerely hope a movie is made of this. Pump Harrison Ford full of steroids and have Rusty Sabich, hooked into his Bea, turn their faces to the sunset of American justice.

Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow is published by Grand Central Publishing and is still only available in hardcover here, for R970 at Amazon SA.

♦ VWB ♦

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