`The Burden of Proof''
by Scott Turow
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22.95
He finds her body in the garage. Alejandro ``Sandy'' Stern, the brilliant defense attorney introduced in Scott Turow's superb 1988 best seller, ``Presumed Innocent,'' arrives home preoccupied with the defense of his brother-in-law, who is being investigated for insider trading. Expecting to be greeted by Clara, his demure wife of 30 years, Stern instead is confronted with her suicide in the garage.
So begins ``The Burden of Proof,'' Turow's riveting second novel. Rather than seeking to duplicate his success in ``Presumed Innocent'' with another whodunit murdery-mystery, Turow instead tackles a more complex and challenging theme: the limits of personal and professional relationships.
Turow uses Stern's investigation of both his wife's death and his client's professional conduct to examine fundamental questions: How well can you ever know another person? How binding is a lawyer's duty to his or her client? Or a husband's duty to his wife? Or a father's to his three grown children? The plot of ``The Burden of Proof'' is thoroughly engaging, though not as devilishly surprising as Turow's first novel.
Stern was the attorney in ``Presumed Innocent'' who defended Rusty Sabich, the Kindle County prosecutor accused of a brutal rape and murder. Apart from passing references (to tell us, for example, that three years have passed and that Sabich has become a judge), the new book has nothing to do with events of the first. Newcomers to Turow need not fear.
In ``The Burden of Proof,'' Stern struggles to defend from indictment his sister's husband, Dixon Hartnell, the wheeler-dealer head of a commodity-futures trading house and a man with whom Stern has had a long, uneasy relationship. Simultaneously he struggles to accept his wife's suicide.
Puzzling over Clara's private life, he reexamines what he thought he knew, arriving at what he believes to have been her reasons for taking her life, only to have each delicately constructed rationale collapse in the face of another unexpected development. Stern gradually comes to realize how little he actually knew of his wife or her inner turmoil.
Turow, himself a Chicago lawyer, is most successful in probing the complexities of the lawyer-client relationship. He masterfully revolves the familial and client entanglements to reveal new perspectives on the limits of a lawyer's ability to defend his or her client - questions complicated by Stern's string of sexual liaisons in the aftermath of Clara's death and an ethically questionable flirtation with the prosecutor opposing him in the Hartnell case.
Indeed, at least for the lawyers reading this novel, one of its pleasures is the accuracy and care with which the limits are drawn and the principles explained. Seeking to trace ownership of an account in Hartnell's brokerage firm, the prosecutor subpoenas documents from Hartnell, who, fearing further warrants, places certain sensitive documents in a safe he delivers to Stern's office. When Stern himself is subpoenaed to produce the safe containing confidential information about his client, the conflict becomes acute.
Without disclosing the slam-bang finish - rest assured, there is one - Sandy Stern ultimately discovers that his tidy world is not as it has seemed. Both mysteries - Clara's death and Hartnell's dealings - suddenly dovetail, undermining all of Stern's original assessments of people and prior events. Stern's ethical obligation to defend his client zealously is suddenly placed in opposition to his duty as a husband and a father.
The conclusion of ``The Burden of Proof'' is surprising, almost too clever. Here, as in a few other places, the plot becomes a bit implausible as Turow struggles to tie loose ends together. Although it fails to match the sheer suspense of Turow's first effort, ``The Burden of Proof'' is nonetheless a disturbing examination of moral complexities, and a worthy and compelling novel.
