Testimony

At first I thought I wasn't going to like this book because it had a slow start and didn't read like a Turow book. Soon I was into it, and then I couldn't put it down. I learned so much about the conflict in Bosnia, but as always, it was the characters that held me. Turow is truly a master at developing his characters, understanding their thinking and behaviors and making them come alive in the reader's mind. This book was more complex than his usual novels, and a divergence from his usual topics. I liked the complexity and, unlike some reviewers, did not think it was too long. I understand why he ended it as he did, and it was appropriate. I won't spoil anything, I'll only say I would have liked a more definitive end. I would highly recommend this book if you want high quality reading.

Divorce should have been the title. I didn't count, but I'd bet more than half the pages of the book deal with introspection about divorce - before, during and lots about after. Since books tells us most about the author, I'd have to guess that Mr. Turow was going through a divorce during the production of this book. His discourse on the topic did nothing to enhance or enliven his A story.As expected Mr. Turow is a pleasant writer. The mystery had the potential to be quite good, but when you spend the last 20 pages of so explaining it to the reader, you have seriously missed the mark.Disappointing.

Compelling story about historical events that are still fresh and felt in the former Yugoslavia. Hard to understand the Balkan war and its different protagonists from far away. This book gives a story line to better understand such events. Good story, intriguing characters and good description of the workings of the ICC and its political relationships with the rest of the world. Readers enjoying geopolitical intrigue will make this book a page turner.

Scott Turow makes a wide detour from his earlier works and, frankly, I don'tlike his new direction and want the old Turow back again. Theoretically, themain theme here revolves around an atrocity in Boznia where 400 people weremurdered by being buried alive in a coal mine landslide and the American armyis thought to be at least partially responsible. Our hero is a prosecutor for theInterenational Criminal Court at the Hague. In the background is the character,Esma Czarni, lawyer for one of the accusers and our hero's lover. I thought ofher as similar to Marlene Dietrich playing a Gypsy in the movie "Golden Earrings".Though the quality of his writibng is excellent, as it always is, Turow devotes somuch space to Gypsy culture and the erotic themes that it seems the focus isbackwards - it's the love story, not the crime. I was not shocked by the subjectmatter, I was bored. The crime and trial passages were much more interesting.

There hasn't been a book by Turow I did not like - until now. It reads like a documentary or a report with very little human interest. The plot has some merit but the reader soon gets lost in the morass of details and lengthy moral discourses. There are some interesting characters and others thoroughly unbelievable. There is something badly wrong about the ending. But the hero was very well drawn and it was for his sake that I plodded to the last page. So, a very generous two stars.

Testimony is two stories, and thus a mixed and cautious review::1 - turmoil, tribalism, intelligence and military bureaucracy and other tangled and intractable problems,2 - and personal foibles, weaknesses plus personal strengths and weaknesses and a male middle age crisis.I don't know if there was a much better way to handle this extensive undertaking.For the first, five stars for excellent and thorough research and excellent storytelling for a valuable exposition of all of the problems involved in the area - on a level with Daniel Silva I House of Spies, for example.As to the second, three and a half stores because of the need to explain personal motivations, failings and strengths necessary to provide a human side to what might have been a dry recitation of a sketch of a fictional rendering the researched events.

I have always thought Turow a cut above other writers specializing in tales from inside the world of lawyers. That I was learning a great deal about the working of the International Criminal Court in The Hague is what kept me reading on though the temptation was to give up at every turn of the page. So much of the characterization lacked credibility, to begin with the gypsy femme fatale. This book contains some pretty awful descriptions of her and the hero's sexual prowess. But the most implausible part of the story comes with the character who is the hero's side-kick, Goos. Admittedly Turow does explain Goos's English has been frozen at the Aussie English of his childhood. But, frankly, Goos's lingo was frozen in a 1950s spoof of Strine which should have made him at least 80 years old. I wonder sometimes what editors see as their task when confronted with writing like this. Turow has a reputation. A pity he wasn't more severely edited.

This is the first and last novel by the author that I will read. I bought it because it is set in the International Criminal Court, where I have worked occasionally. As a novel, it has some interesting parts, especially the background material on Former Yugoslavia. But much of the book is turgid. And,as a result, I simply couldn't be bothered to understand the last scenes. As one reviewer has noted, the gypsy/Iranian character is simply weird. the hero appears to be an inexperienced 30 year-old for much of the novel rather than a 55 year-old top lawyer. very disappointing.

took ages to finish it but excellent

One of his best?

Excellent read. Scott Throw certainly knows how to keep you guessing.