By J.E.
I used to like reading legal thrillers quite a bit, and I can clearly remember what a stir Scott Turow’s first novel, Presumed Innocent, caused when it was published in 1987. The book was an immediate success with fans, earned glowing reviews from many critics, and more or less paved the way for writers like John Grisham, who came along a couple years later.
I read and enjoyed Presumed Innocent, but didn’t bother following Turow’s career. In fact, I didn’t even know that he had kept writing after that initial bestseller until I saw a few more of his books during a recent trip to the library. On a whim, I decided to check out the audiobook version of Pleading Guilty, which was published in 1994. I should have just been content to remember Turow as a one-hit wonder.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Martin Gold, Carl Pagnucci, and Wash Thale are the three senior partners Gage & Griswell, an elite law firm that derives most of its income from handling the various business ventures of Trans-National Air. This includes the management of an escrow account informally known as the 397 Settlement Account, which contains $288 million earmarked for plaintiffs who successfully sued TN after a major air disaster.
The problem is, some $5.6 million of that money has been funneled out of the account and into an anonymous bank account in the tiny Central American city of Pico Luan. The three senior partners of G&G suspect that another partner, Bert Kamin, orchestrated the embezzlement and has now disappeared into the sunset with the money. They now want Mack Malloy to uncover Bert’s whereabouts and convince Bert to return the money on the QT so that the cops, and, more importantly, the top execs at TN, won’t ever even know that anything was amiss.
The entire story is told from Mack’s point of view, as he dictates the details of his investigation into a tape recorder. Mack uncovers clues that point to Bert’s involvement in an illegal gambling ring, which leads to a series of shocking discoveries (including a dead body) and run-ins with the police, before culminating in an ending that was heavily hinted at all along.
My Reaction: I thought Pleading Guilty was extremely tedious and boring, and if I had been reading it on my own instead of listening to it on tape, I probably would have given up on it about halfway through. I just had several problems with the book, which I’ll attempt to lay out for you here.
The biggest problem for me was the fact that Mack wasn’t a likable guy at all. He had no redeeming qualities, wasn’t interesting, and was tiresome to listen to throughout the entire novel. I realize that not all authors aim to make their protagonists likable; however, the character, whether hero or antihero, ought to at least be unique and interesting. Mack was neither.
A second problem that I had with Pleading Guilty was the way Turow inflated the page count by adding in dumb subplots that simply should have been left out. For instance, were all of those scenes with Lyle necessary? What was the point of showing that Mack had a bad relationship with his teenage son? In the grand scheme of things, would the story have been substantially different if this Lyle character never even existed? No; the book would have been shorter, that’s all.
I was also turned off by what I perceived to be amateurish writing on Turow’s part. It felt as though he made a conscious effort to be as descriptive as possible, which resulted in similes and metaphors littering nearly every single paragraph. This is the type of overwriting that publishing houses usually caution first-time novelists against doing, but I guess they don’t extend the same warnings to seasoned authors. Too bad.
Finally, I thought the ending was far too contrived and pat. I mean, Turow hinted very early on that Mack was thinking about taking the money, and then brought the subject up several times during the course of the novel, so the actual deed wasn’t a surprise. But it still didn’t feel right to me. It was far too easy for Mack to forge the paperwork and “guess” Jake’s password. Who in their right mind would use their own initials as the password for a bank account containing nearly $6 million? Not even the biggest egotist out there, so give me a friggin’ break, please.
Overall, Pleading Guilty was not a very good read at all. There are a lot of better legal-type thrillers out there, so don’t waste your time with this one!
