Kindle County Books In Order

Publication Order of Kindle County Legal Thriller Books

Stewart Dubinsky/ Rusty Sabich are the main characters in a series (Kindle County Legal Thriller series) of books written by a bestselling American author of mystery and thriller novels Scott Turow. Rusty Sabich works as the deputy chief prosecuting attorney in a mid-western city. Turow began the publication of Kindle County Legal Thriller series in 1986 when Presumed Innocent the first book in the series was published. The series is set in a fictional county Cook County. Presumed Innocent was adapted into a 1990 movie by the same name directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Harrison Ford, Paul Winfield, and Greta Scacchi.

Presumed Innocent

What happens when one of the top lawyers in the office of the prosecuting attorney is charged with murder? Presumed Innocent the debut novel in Kindle County Legal Thriller series is the story about an experienced, prominent lawyer who is accused of murder and helping to prepare his own defense. The first third of this novel focuses on the events leading to the trial while the remaining part deals with the trial itself. Scott Turow worked as an attorney, and therefore his knowledge about court trials is from his personal experience he garnered when participating in actual trials.

Presumed Innocent is a pretty long novel, 431 pages and it is in these many pages we are introduced to our defendant Rusty Sabich as she struggles through the lengthy trial that is narrated to the reader in great detail including the personalities of the prosecuting attorneys, the judge, the defense attorney and several witnesses. The brutal killing of a co-worker, Carolyn Polhemus has demoralized the deputy prosecuting attorney Rusty. Carolyn was Rusty’s former lover, a beautiful woman who still preoccupied his thoughts and much to his shame.

Rusty had confessed his adulterous acts to his wife and is trying to keep his marriage together just for the sake of their son. His superior, Raymond Horgan is in the middle of a campaign and wants him to be in charge of Carolyn’s which puts Rusty in an awkward position. However, things go from awkward to pretty bad when Rusty is arrested for the death of Carolyn’s murder.

The novel takes the readers deep into the law enforcement and politics of the fictional Kindle country where everyone seems to hide skeletons in the closet, and beneath the respectable faces there is plenty of sleaze and for a bit into the fictional city underbelly, teeming with gangs, drugs, and danger. The trial and the murder mystery are what make this narrative engaging and a hard to put down, some of the fabulous cross-examinations and the courtroom scenes are detailed described and exciting to read.

The story is told from Rozat K. Sabich also known as Rusty who is the main character. Along the story, we are treated to plenty of exciting courtroom dramas, complex characters, and some fabulous portrayals of such different human emotions and frailties. Betrayal, illicit passion, jealousy, paternal feelings, friendship, dirty politics, family bonds and corruption finds a place in this book. Additionally, the author has detailed described few technical legal terms which make it easier for the readers to understand the complexities of the courtroom.

The Burden of Proof

Following the simultaneous cinematic and written of the debut novel in the series, Presumed Innocent, Turow makes a comeback to Kindle County for another exciting and dramatic exploration of the emotional oddity of lives wrapped in the curious legal culture of American society. In the second book in Kindle County Legal Thriller series we find ourselves just three years after the events of the Presumed Innocent in the life of Sandy Stern, an attorney who tirelessly defended Rusty in the murder trial in the first book.

However this time, there is no, but instead, there is death. Sandy’s wife Clara commits suicide somehow connected to an unexplainable withdrawal from her personal trust fund just days before her death. Her suicide and the unexplained transactions leave Sandy with more questions than answers, and with a vivid memory of having discovered his wife dead in their garage.

In the midst of Sandy’s personal tragedy unwinds the increasing intrusion of the legal issues surrounding one of his more difficult client, Dixon Hartnell, a man of questionable ethics and the owner of a well-known investment corporation, and the husband to Silvia, one of Sandy’s sisters. His employment of Stern’s son in law John as a floor trader in the town’s exchange does not make things any simpler for Sandy.

In the middle of the ever-tightening circle of influence, that of an unraveling scandal around Hartnell reveals is the brooding that Clara’s death forces on Sandy. Where he tries to access his distance as a father and husband and how his talents at matters of law established that distance to the point of distraction, incomplete perspectives of his own family, creating flawed relationships, and ultimately a troubling picture of himself.

Sandy Stern sees himself idealized too much by his sister and radically alienated from his son Peter, a famous physician.

Scott Turow carefully creates a choreographed dance among Sandy’s neighbors, family, and the professional friends into a tale that deviates from its clearly defined plot in only a few places. There are little-wasted characters and correspondingly few wasted motions. From Hartnell’s representatives to the office workers that manage the company trade operations, to the neighbors who help Sandy following his wife’s death, each is beautifully woven with an important and credible in Burden of Proof.

The author beautifully draws his characters just like a sculptor does with precision, with the cognitive depth of hi-resolution mental camera. As one might compare Turow’s writing style to that of John Grisham, Turow is deliberate, methodical, purposeful, expressing the finest detail even from the minute nuance. Even the secondary characters are beautifully woven.

Overall, Burden of Proof is a masterfully crafted story of personal awareness, of a man arriving late to his midlife crisis, forced to define himself for a new future and a new reality plagued by enigmatic circumstances and a conflux of malice from his beloved family.