'Reversible Errors'
by Scott Turow
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28
Even those most committed to the death penalty usually recognize that no system is perfect and, despite all our efforts, that mistakes can be made. Scott Turow's dazzling new courtroom thriller, "Reversible Errors," tackles the nation's ultimate sanction and the fallibility of our justice system.
The novel, set in Turow's fictional Kindle County, revolves around a triple murder in a county diner for which a street weasel named Rommy "Squirrel" Gandolf has confessed after a rather difficult interrogation session. Ambitious prosecutor Muriel Wynn and gritty street detective Larry Starczek secure a conviction, and death sentence, for Gandolf.
Ten years later, as Gandolf sweats out the last few weeks before his execution date, the federal Court of Appeals appoints Arthur Raven to represent Gandolf on his last-ditch habeas corpus petition. Raven, a polished corporate litigator unfamiliar with criminal defense (much less death-penalty litigation), reluctantly takes on the case and struggles to gain vindication for what he believes is an innocent man, boxed in by seemingly insurmountable odds.
Evidence soon surfaces that might demonstrate Gandolf's innocence, in the form of another inmate, Erno Erdai, who chillingly confesses to the crime and provides convincing evidence of his guilt just before he dies of lung cancer. The stage thus set, Raven and Wynn struggle over Erdai's testimony, with Gandolf's life hanging in the balance.
Raven, now fully committed to saving an innocent man from death, meets his match with Wynn, equally set on demonstrating the validity of her original prosecution, particularly in light of her ongoing campaign to become the new county prosecutor. The lightning crackles as the two clash in the courtroom, each convinced of the moral righteousness of his or her cause.
Turow unfolds a typically twisted plot, complete with bombshell developments and stunning revelations spattered across the pages. With his own death-penalty litigation experience, Turow captures that rare balance between accurate legal details and arresting plot development. Turow skillfully weaves past and present, avoiding a linear narrative and forcing the reader to continually revise the events, motives and actions that occurred on the night of the murder.
But Turow's real strength lies behind the story, as he develops the protagonists into real people, carrying real burdens and making real choices that they sometimes live to regret. Everyone in this book has made mistakes, but only some are willing to confront them. Indeed, the novel's central theme of redemption addresses the very line between errors that are recoverable - legal and emotional - and those that are not.
Raven, a career bachelor with no likely prospects, becomes involved with Gillian Sullivan, the judge who presided over the original Gandolf trial but was herself subsequently convicted of taking bribes and has only just been released from prison. Beaten and defeated, she struggles with her disgrace and disbelief that her crimes can ever be truly put behind her. Raven, touched by her vulnerability, struggles to build a relationship with her, uncertain how to reach her and all too aware that she could become a witness in the case.
On the prosecution side, Wynn has problems of her own. She sacrificed a once-promising relationship with Detective Starczek and married a wealthy, powerful man, only to realize as she is forced back into a working relationship with Starczek that the compromise she made may have been less to her advantage than she realized. Starczek, in turn, harbors a bitter recognition that he is "just a cop" unlikely to capture the attention of an ambitious and beautiful prosecutor like Wynn.
Erdai himself struggles to recast the past, atone for his sins and protect his own interests.
It's a compelling mixture of carefully drawn characters that add immeasurable depth to the novel. Unfortunately, though, Turow leavens the book with unnecessarily graphic sex scenes, which actually detract from the development of the characters, add nothing to the plot, and are almost laughably drawn from an awkward male perspective. They are neither substantial (or subtle) enough to be erotic, nor passing enough to be colorful background. A stronger editor could surely have improved this text with judicious use of a red pen.
But then, why quibble? Turow is so far above the pack that, even freighted with this minor flaw, the book nonetheless easily rises above it. Turow has, by this point, plainly laid claim to the title of Master of the Courtroom Thriller. And he deserves it.
