Two of Scott Turow’s three most recent novels tell the stories of the final legal cases of two characters who were introduced in his first novel almost forty years ago. Presumed Innocent (1987) was the first-person narrative of Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor who was blindsided to find himself charged with the murder of another lawyer in the Prosecuting Attorney’s office, with whom he’d previously been having an affair. Rusty had been supervising the investigation of her murder and had taken oppostunities to steer the investigation away from the victim’s involvement with him, so his behaviour looked guilty. At trial, he was represented by Sandy Stern, an established defence lawyer who in turn becomes the central character in Turow’s second novel, The Burden of Proof (1990). Unlike his first, this is not a first-person narrative: the reader generally perceives Sandy from a certain distance. In Turow’s subsequent novels, Sandy is often referred to in passing, as is Rusty, though less frequently. Rusty makes an appearance in Limitations (2006) as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals.

Then, in Innocent (2010) both characters reappear, and in their original roles again. Rusty, who has recently been elected to the state Supreme Court, is again charged with murder, this time of his wife, and again retains Sandy as his counsel.

And now, in The Last Trial (2020) and 2025’s Presumed Guilty, each of these characters returns to address a jury for the last time. Each of the novels centres on a criminal trial in which a great deal is at stake. In fact, in both of them there’s a count of murder on the indictment, though in the first case there is never any likelihood of the defendant’s being convicted of that offence. Kiril Pafko, a 78-year-old doctor and scientist who was awarded a Nobel Prize some decades earlier, is in no danger of being formally sentenced to life imprisonment, though throughout the trial there is a real possibility that he will die in prison.

The Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the role a particular family of proteins plays in most of the major forms of cancer. Decades later, Kiril and his son Leopoldo (“Lep”) developed a treatment, a medicine, based on this discovery. During blind trials, it was noticed that some patients were dying in their second year of treatment, apparently of an allergic reaction. Kiril is accused of having unblinded the data, had the names of the deceased patients removed (on the pretext that they had left the trial before it was complete and had mistakenly been labeled as having died) and failed to tell either the FDA or the company conducting the trial about any of this. The main accusation against him is one of fraud, but he is also charged with murder (of several patients who died, also of allergic reactions, after the medicine was approved by the FDA) and insider trading.

While the murder charge is never going to be considered by the jury — it’s included on the indictment so that the prosecution can introduce evidence about the people who died — and the fraud is the real substance of the case, the insider trading count is the one that that Kiril and his lawyer will find it hardest to beat. On learning of the deaths of the alleged victims, Kiril did not sell any of his own shares, which he would have been prevented from doing by a company policy, but he ordered the sale of those which were being held for his grandchildren in a trust handled by a different broker. Sandy hopes to confuse the issue by arguing that the information on which Kiril acted was not confidential — the victims had waived medical confidentiality for their lawyers — but this is not a good defence to the charge.

Faced with the prospect of years in prison and the destruction of his reputation as a scientific superstar, Kiril Pafko engages his old friend, Sandy Stern and Sandy’s daughter and law partner, Marta, to defend him. Sandy is now 85, twice a widower, a cancer survivor and seriously contemplating retirement. He is reluctant to take on a demanding major criminal trial but he feels an obligation to Pafko, whom he has known for nearly 60 years. They were both born in Buenos Aires and became youthful immigrants to the United States. Sandy owes his recovery from cancer to Parko’s drug, which he was able to obtain “right after the dogs and rats” (p. 99) — before it was tested on humans.

As the case progresses, Sandy indeed becomes convinced that he’s no longer up to the rigours and stresses of a long and complex trial. He makes some mistakes that would once have been uncharacteristic, particularly early on, and risks antagonzing the judge, whom he has known for more than 30 years (see The Burden of Proof) and is a good friend of Marta’s, but he recovers quickly. He is misled by a flirtatious doctor, who was once an executive in Pafko’s company and Kiril Parko’s lover, about what her evidence will be. As soon as Marta sees the doctor entering the courtroom to give evidence, she hands her father a note: “Your girlfriend is about to stick it to Kiril” (p. 262). Marta is right, but Sandy still has enough mental agility to adjust his cross-examination strategy, relying on an inspired discovery by his paralegal grandaughter, Pinky. When the doctor has finished giving evidence and the jury has been sent home for the day a little early, the judge comments “Live long enough and you’ll see everything” (p. 287).

In the later book, Rusty Sabich, too, is prevailed upon to take a case that he feels it would be much wiser to pass up. It’s only his second trial as a defence lawyer, and his first major one. This time, the murder charge is at the centre of the case. Whereas Sandy Stern has spent a long career as a defence lawyer, Rusty comes to that role very late. When we first met him in Presumed Innocent he was a deputy in the Prosecuting Attorney’s office. He almost immediately became the accused in a murder case. After that, he was interim Proscuting Attorney, then a trial judge, an appellate judge, a murder accused again, a convicted felon (obstruction of justice, to which he pleaded guilty but of which he was exonerated after a few months), and most recently a mediator and arbitrator. He has seen the criminal justice system from more angles than most.

Rusty is now 77 and engaged to be married to Bea, a teacher who is 23 years younger than he. Bea has a son, Aaron, whom she and her ex-husband adopted immediately after his birth. Aaron is now in his early 20s and on probation following his conviction of possession of drugs with intent to supply. He is Black, and his lived all his life in a rural, white and predominently wealthy area north-west of Kindle County and near the border with Wisconsin. When his childhood sweetheart is found strangled in her car, which has been hidden in woodland, Aaron is the obvious suspect. There’s a substandial amount of apparently compelling evidence against him.

The dead young woman, Mae Potter, was the daughter of the Prosecuting Attorney for Skageon County, where Rusty, Bea and Aaron now live. Hardy Potter is out to get Aaron, but the prosecution won’t be happening in his county. Although the prosecutors believe (wrongly, as it turns out) that the murder occurred in Skageon County, the car was found in a neighbouring county to the north, and it’s apparent that an attempt had been made there to hide the body and cover up the crime, so Aaron is also charged with obstruction of justice and, while the more serious charge usually determines where the trial will take place, this is not a strict requirement. So, Aaron’s lawyer, whoever that might turn out to be, will be up against the PA for Marenago County, Hiram Jackdorp.

Rusty is clear that, whoever Aaron’s attorney might be, it shouldn’t be him. However, it isn’t so easy to find an alternative. Rusty is sure that a city lawyer from Kindle County or elsewhere would not go down well with a rural jury; there’s one lawyer in Indiana who has experience of murder trials and would be ideal but he’s about to begin a civil antitrust case that “‘may last the rest of my life’” (p. 151). He won’t be available for months, and Aaron has been refused bail. Like it or not, Rusty is It.

Mae is universally described as having been both beautiful and brilliant. Her shrink said she had Borderline Personality Disorder, a disgnosis with which her mother disagreed. Her former best friend, Cassity, who is still friends with Aaron, believed that Mae was compelled to try to make everyone hate her as much as she hated herself. She had blackmailed her father into letting her go to New York to try to become a model. Her grandfather, Mansfield (“Mansy”) Potter, a retired judge and Republican party figurehead, had been Rusty’s closest friend in Skageon County — they didn’t discuss politics, recognizing that neither of them had any real influence — but told Rusty that if he represented Aaron that would be the end of their friendship.

I’ve said before, more than once, that Turow tries to do something different with each of his books. That’s less obviously true of these two novels than of most of his earlier ones, given that each is a continuation of or sequel to a previous story, so some degree of continuity is required. The Last Trial, is a kind of sequel to his second novel, The Burden of Proof, which remains one of my favourite books of his. Both novels centre on the same characters, Sandy himself, Marta, and Sonny Klonsky, an assistant US Attorney in the earlier book, a Federal judge in the later one. (She has also been a judge in the state courts in The Laws of Our Fathers where, as here, she presides over a murder trial.) One of the things I particularly like about The Burden of Proof is that, while it is clearly a legal drama and opens with the discovery of a body (that of Sandy’s first wife, Clara), it’s not about a murder. The crimes with which it’s concerned are largely financial. And, while The Last Trial features a murder charge, there is no actual murder in the story. One character takes an action that might be considered an attempted murder.) But, like its predecessor, it’s mainly a story about corporate wrongdoing, in which the word “racketeering” (p. 10) is briefly mentioned.

Presumed Guilty, in contrast, has a murder right at its heart. As may be clear from the outline I attempted above, it adheres much more closely to the model or template of the typical legal thriller than does any of Turow’s previous novels, with the arguable exception of his first: a lawyer undertakes, with misgivings, the defence of a family member accused of the murder of a young woman and against whom the evidence seems overwhelming. It’s as if Turow had said to himself, “maybe it’s time I did my version of the standard model before I finish up”.

So, while each of these books is mainly taken up with a complex criminal trial that unfolds over several days, so that there is a structural resemblance between them, the contrasts between them are striking. One is a Federal case, taking place in a grand old building designed to inspire awe. The other is a state trial, being heard in a backwater. While the proceedings in the first are more formal and restrained, in the second the judge several times rebukes the prosecutor for what she calls “speaking objections”. That’s to say, instead of something like “Asked and answered”, or “Calls for a conclusion” or “Relevance”, Jackdorp has asked questions like “What’s Mr Potter’s job got to do with anything?” (p. 221).

The most dramatic and engaging episodes in both novels feature the crossexamination of prosecution witnesses. Rusty reflects that prosecutors tend not to become as good at crossexamination as defence lawyers, because the latter have to try to find flaws in the prosecution case but will often not adduce any evidence themselves, so the prosecutors don’t get the same opportunity to develop those skills. Be that as it may, both Rusty (who has prosecuted murders before, but not defended them) and Jackdorp (a lifelong prosecutor) turn out to be effective crossexaminers.

The resemblances and contrasts between these two novels are most in evidence in the decisions as to whether the defendant should testify. Kiril Pafko insists that he wants to tell the jury what he did and didn’t do. It’s obviious to Sandy that this would be a disaster. Kiril isn’t able to explain any of the evidence against him: he maintains that he did not unblind the data or request the removal of the dead patients’ names from the data set, notwithstanding the computer and phone records that show that these actions were taken from his office. Sandy thinks that Kiril believes that he can charm the jury into thinking he must not be guilty, but that his evidence would have no substance. And he would have no choice but to admit the insider trading: Sandy couldn’t knowingly allow him to perjure himself. In fact, as it turns out, Kiril understands fully that he cannot afford to be a witness, but has insisted right to the end that that is his intention in order to put pressure on two members of his family. (Sandy is astonished to learn that his relations with those family members are so hostile, something that is not at all apparent from outside.)

Aaron, in contrast, has every intention of giving evidence, against Rusty’s strong advice. In their respective novels, both Sandy and Rusty note the apparently paradoxical fact that in most circumstances (including the present cases) a defence lawyer will, with good reason, do everything possible to dissuade the defendant from testifying, though 70% of acquittals are of defendants who actually gave evidence. It’s striking that the defence lawyers in both books mention this statistic. The paradox is merely (or at any rate largely) apparent. Most criminal defendants are guilty and will be found so. That’s because prosecutors don’t want to squander public money or their own credibility by prosecuting cases where they don’t have a strong chance of winning. It follows that only a small proportion of defendants will be acquitted. So there’s no contradiction between the propositions that (a) 70% of those acquittals will be of people who gave evidence in their own defence and (b) that giving evidence in one’s own defence is generally speaking a losing strategy.

By the time he has to tell the judge and prosecutor whether Aaron will be testifying, Rusty is convinced both that Aaron is in fact innocent and that the evidence already before the jury should be sufficient to persuade them of that. But Aaron still wants to testify. Rusty suggests to Jackdorp that he drop the charges. Jackdorp replies that he’s not afraid of a “Not Guilty” verdict and that he feels obliged to pursue the case to a verdict out of consideration for Mae’s family. So Rusty then contacts his former friend, Mansy, the victim’s grandfather, to make essentially the same request: Jackdorp would probably drop the charges if he was sure that was what the Potter family wanted. But though Mansy has heard the evidence given in court, he’s not yet ready to concede that Aaron might be innocent.

“… The reality is Aaron will walk out of there because Hardy and Vanda made those mistakes. And me too, if you want to blame me for the same errors. That’s the truth. At least if Aaron doesn’t breathe life back into the prosecution by getting on the stand.” As soon as Mansy hears his last words, he stops cold and slowly rears back against the dark leather. He emits a low sound, while he lifts his face to see me from the side.

“Oh,” he says, “oh, that’s what this is about. That’s why you’re thumping your chest and giving me all these pretty speeches about the good and the true. Because your idiot client is going to jump on the witness stand … You want me to save that little devil from himself, when you can’t.” (p. 470)

Kiril Pafco does not give evidence in his trial; Aaron does so in his. In each case, the jury reaches a unanimous verdict.

I suggested above that one thing The Last Trial has in common with The Burden of Proof is that they’re both legal dramas in which the central crimes are not murders. Another is that both feature a relationship between father and son that can best be characterized as dysfunctional. In the earlier novel, Sandy is shocked to discover the depth of his son’s hatred for him. The son, Peter, who is obviously grieving for his mother, has betrayed his father’s principles at the instigation of the US Attorney and an FBI agent. Sandy is taken wholly by surprise and seems to have no idea what is behind his son’s betrayal. By the time of the later novel, relations between the father and son have improved somewhat, in that Peter will speak to his father by phone and both are quite civil. Peter is now living in a different city. He and his husband have adopted a daughter, whom Sandy is keen to meet, but the invitation is slow to come.

In The Last Trial the dysfunctional paternal/filial relationship is between the two doctors Pafko. Professing reluctance, Lep gives damning evidence against his father, having made a deal with the prosecution. Because Lep has been granted immunity, it makes sense for the defence to try to shift blame to him, suggesting to the jury that he rather than Kiril may be responsible for the fraud. But Kiril, at the insistence of his wife Donatella, Lep’s mother, will not allow Sandy to follow this line. Lep, unlike his father, may not be in any danger of imprisonment but Donatella is determined to protect him from reputational damage too and if possible to save his career. Kiril’s instructions on this point severely limit Sandy’s options for the conduct of the defence.

Kiril, unlike Sandy in the earlier novel, is at least aware of the reasons why his son might hate him. Maybe that makes him a bit more perceptive than his old friend. Sandy is highly intelligent, observant and quick thinking but, as perhaps befits a defence lawyer, he has a tendency to narrow his focus to the issues relevant to the instant case.

Editions: The Last Trial, Pan paperback, 2021; Presumed Guilty, Swift paperback, 2026.