With Presumed Guilty, the final book in his Presumed Innocent trilogy, publishing in January 2025, PW talked with Scott Turow about his enduring fascination with the fictional world of Kindle County, how he feels about being the father of the modern legal thriller, and how his prior life as a pro bono defense attorney has shaped his current life as an author.
Your gripping new novel, Presumed Guilty, is the third book in the Rusty Sabich/Presumed Innocent series. What inspired you to write it?
The inspiration for Presumed Guilty is one I carried with me for a long time, although it’s hardly unique to me: the resonance of a situation in which someone you love and trust is accused of a serious crime. The recognition that Rusty would have a role in this kind of drama is of more recent vintage. After going back to Sandy Stern in The Last Trial, I began to think I might enjoy one more go-round with Rusty.
What can fans expect from Presumed Guilty? And do you recommend that new readers read the first two novels, Presumed Innocent and Innocent, before jumping into this one?
In Presumed Guilty, Rusty Sabich has turned his back on Kindle County and his former life, in the wake of the events of Innocent and his release from prison. Seeking refuge, he has settled in Skageon County, a farming and recreational area two hours north. Although he arrived assuming he was going to live as a kind of numbed recluse, he eventually finds himself restored by falling in love with the local grade school principal. Thus he is deeply challenged when she calls on Rusty to defend her son, accused of his girlfriend’s murder.
Familiarity with the two prior books in the trilogy is not required. I wrote Presumed Guilty intending that it could be enjoyed as a standalone.
Throughout your career, you’ve repeatedly returned to some of your most beloved literary creations—including Rusty Sabich and Sandy Stern, who stars in The Last Trial, among other books. What do you like about returning characters?
Writing about characters you’ve written about before is like reuniting with an old friend. Furthermore, given the gaps of many years between these books, I’m writing about people who have been much changed by the passage of time. And I’m always curious about who these people I knew years ago have now become.
Many of your novels, starting with Presumed Innocent, are set in Kindle County, which at this point is a character as much as a place. How would you describe Kindle Country, and what attracts you to it?
I created Kindle County by accident. It took me eight years to write Presumed Innocent. I had started out writing about Boston, but I’ve always pumped a lot of my current experience into my fiction writing, and so, over time, the city I was writing about became more and more like Chicago. Eventually, it became a place of its own, the size of Boston and equally in-grown but, like Chicago, a place where you often feel all that overheated urban striving.
When Presumed Innocent was released in 1986, it helped establish the modern legal thriller genre. What do you enjoy about the genre, and has the genre changed over the decades?
I’m proud when I’m called the father of the legal thriller, or something similar. But what I’m proudest of about it is that I think these novels about the law and lawyers have helped people—here and around the world—understand our legal system, its good intentions and occasional failures. I hope it’s made readers understand the value of the rule of law.
For many years, you were a partner at the international law firm Dentons and did pro bono work representing wrongfully convicted clients. You’ve made a significant impact on the law—your achievements include securing the release, in 1995, of a man who was on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. How has your law career impacted you as a writer?
It’s hard to say how the lawyer impacted the writer, or vice versa. I’m one person and have experienced both careers intensely and with appreciation. Certainly, being a lawyer gave me a way to look at individual experience in a more generalized way. But in both callings, it’s obvious to me that I was intensely preoccupied with right and wrong and the uses and abuses of power.
What do you think makes courtroom dramas so appealing?
The courtroom is theater made real. What is at stake in the courtroom requires no suspension of disbelief—to paraphrase the prologue of Presumed Innocent, there was a real crime, real victims, and real pain, and now, there is great anxiety on all sides when real punishment is at stake. But this expedition in history, this re-creation of what happened, must be spoken about in terms that people who are not professionals can understand. In the federal courthouse in Chicago, there’s always been a group of retirees who come downtown to watch the cases on trial every day. It’s the best free entertainment around.
In 2024, Presumed Innocent was released as an Apple TV+ series starring Jake Gyllenhaal and was one of Apple’s most successful shows ever. What did you think of the series and its wildly enthusiastic reception?
Well, first credit where credit is due: David E. Kelley, the screenwriter, and Dustin Thomason of Bad Robot, who ran the set, made this happen, not me, as did the two directors, Greg Yaitanes and Anne Sewitsky, and the brilliant players who brought the show to life. Obviously, though, I’ve been somewhat amazed that this story I made up decades ago on the morning commuter train and in stolen hours working in my basement continues to mesmerize. Every creative person longs to make something with that kind of lasting impact.
You’ve said that you’re not a fan of the writing factory and that it takes time for you to write books. What is your typical writing day, and has it changed?
Yes, writing is different now that I spend less time practicing law, although I still have one pro bono case that is occasionally pretty demanding. When we’re in Southwest Florida, which is where we spend the largest part of the year, I get up with the sun, drink two cups of coffee while I read the newspapers on my laptop, and then set to work. A great day is five hours of writing, and it doesn’t happen often. The early stages are the hardest. At that point, it feels like I need a seat belt to keep me in the writing chair. But as the imagined world begins to knit together, it draws me in and becomes a source of more and more excitement. I still love to write.
When you’re not writing, what do you like to do for fun? And, more importantly, how’s your golf swing?
Grandchildren, golf, tennis, and a lot of reading and sports on TV are definitely my principal pastimes these days. As for my golf swing, the people I play with often tell me how good it looks. But as we sometimes learn in this life, good looks are overrated, and the resulting shots frequently leave a lot to be desired.
