Best legal thriller ever

I recently wrote about the top ten legal thrillers by John Grisham. I think he is the king of this genre, but in my personal ranking best title in this category does not belong to any of Grisham's novels, but to Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow.

Scott Turow is a writer, a practicing attorney and author of eight novels and two nonfictional books. Presumed Innocent, published in 1987, was his first fiction book. It tells the story of Rozat "Rusty" Sabich - chief deputy prosecutor of Kindle County. One day he must deal with the brutal murder of Carolyn Polhemus - prosecuting attorney, who was once his mistress. His boss, Raymond Horgan, who is going for re-election, wants the case to be closed quickly since he believes that it will score on it  political capital. So Sabich starts to work on finding Polhemus' killer, but with poor results. There is no evidence nor idea who could do it.

During this time, Horgan discovers the truth about Sabich's relationship with Carolyn, and he pulls him from the case. From that moment evidence begin to turn up that Sabich may have killed Polhemus. Sabich is accused and suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted. Even his wife, who knew about the affair, begins to suspect his guilt.

Sabich has to battle to prove his innocence. He hires lawyer Alejandro "Sandy" Stern to defend him. In this way prosecutor participates in the process from the "other side".

It is interesting to see how a prosecutor thinks and how a defender acts, the methods they use and what is their attitude to work. While reading you can clearly see that Turow has a law degree and wast experience in this profession (he prosecuted several high-profile corruption cases as the Wikipedia states). He created world full of evocative descriptions, great dialogues (especially in the courtroom) and realistic characters.

I remember that while reading Presumed Innocent every moment I was impressed by things that I've learned, turn-based literary workshop, as well as the development of history, because he invented it very credible, it was logically drawn, probable and ends with a surprising finale.

I won't write a detailed review of this book, I would just like to encourage everyone to - if you haven't done it already – to read this book. Certainly you won't regret it! You can buy Presumed Innocent on Amazon.

PS. The novel was adapted for the screen with the same title in 1990 directed by Alan J. Pakula with Harrison Ford in the main role. See description and reviews.