Turow's Latest Legal Thriller
Scott Turow has been a lawyer for more than 20 years. He's been a prosecutor and a defense attorney.
But what he's best known for is his ability to take readers into a courtroom and teach them about the law and human nature with his legal thrillers.
Personal Injuries is his newest book and he shares some of the personal history that influenced its writing with CBS News This Morning.
The main character of Personal Injuries is a young lawyer who appears to have everything: a beautiful wife, pursuit by women, a thriving law practice and judges in his pocket.
But his wife is dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the FBI is tracking the secret bank account he uses to pay off judges. When he is cast into a plot to snare bigger fish, an undercover FBI agent complicates his life.
In the 1980s when Turow was an assistant U.S. attorney in Cook County, Ill., he was part of a team connected with Operation Greylord, a federal investigation of corruption of the Illinois judiciary.
| Personal Injuries: Chapter I An excerpt from Scott Turow's book. |
Corruption strikes a personal chord with Turow. Early in the book, the chief prosecutor, Stan Sennet, relates the story of his uncle Petros who was swindled in a land deal.
Turow writes: "I was only a kid, but hell, I'd read my civics book. I said to him, Uncle Petros, why don't you go to court, sue? And he looked at me and he laughed. He said, 'A poor man like me? I can't afford to buy a judge.' Not 'I can't afford a lawyer.' Although he couldn't. But he realized that anybody who knew in advance what the Center City Plan provided couldn't be beaten in the Kindle County Superior Courthouse." (page 14).
This anecdote is from Turow's life. Petros was his grandfather. Corruption in the Cook County courts was a way of life. Even as a child, Turow was aware of it.
He wrote in press materials: "My grandfather's message that the well-to-do and politically connected were beyond the restraint of the justice system in Cook County always haunted me."
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His first published book was One L about his experiences as a first-year law student at Harvard University. First published in 1977, it was republished after the success of runaway bestseller Presumed Innocent.
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