Presumed Innocent

⚖The case for it

The trial is the engine. Cross-examinations, objections, the grinding mechanics of evidence, all of it written with “an unusual degree of authenticity” by a working prosecutor, and readers report they “could close my eyes & be IN that courtroom.” Sandy Stern is who everybody comes out admiring, a defence attorney whose entire method is “his composure and skill in the courtroom.” At least one reader used the evidence-law scenes to study for the bar. The morgue chapter is unpleasant in exactly the way it intends. Readers call the result “a thinking man’s thriller,” which is what launched the legal thriller as a category.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

A third of the book passes before the trial starts, and the investigation and backstory filling it “could have been much shorter, by at least 125 pages,” with the blunter verdict that “half this novel can be skipped.” Rusty narrates as “an uber-solipsistic white dude,” and his fixation on a colleague wears thin long before the trial takes the book over. The 1987 ethnic characterisations land as “casual racism, sexism, and homophobia,” enough that readers dock a star for it and call the book “unnecessarily racist, and unjustifiably long.” The victim is handled through a dated stereotype.

— the honest librarian

9h

honest hours

13

sittings