Turow, Scott

▪ American author

born April 12, 1949, Chicago, Ill., U.S.

      best-selling American novelist, the creator of a genre of crime and suspense novels dealing with law and the legal profession.

      Turow received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1978 from Harvard. While there he published a nonfiction work, One L: What They Really Teach You at Harvard Law School (1977), that is considered a classic for law students. His first novel, Presumed Innocent (1987; filmed 1990), was written while he was working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago. The story of Rusty Sabich, a deputy prosecutor assigned to investigate the murder of a female colleague with whom he had had an affair, is a well-crafted tale of suspense. The Burden of Proof (1990; filmed for television 1992) and Pleading Guilty (1993) continue in the vein of legal drama, although the former focuses more on the domestic troubles of its protagonist. Pleading Guilty tells the story of a lawyer and former cop who is instructed to find a coworker who has embezzled millions. Turow's other works include The Laws of Our Fathers (1996), a legal thriller that focuses on the entangled lives of a judge and her peers who came of age in the 1960s, and Personal Injuries (1999), a well-wrought story of deception and corruption. Turow also edited the two-volume Guilty as Charged: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology (1996, 1997).

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