the last trial

Sandy Stern is an old friend.

Scott Turow introduced him to me in the 1980s in Presumed Innocent. Stern was then a middle-aged trial attorney at the top of his game defending the chief deputy district attorney charged with murder. (Raul Julio played him in the film version. I cannot read Stern's dialog now without hearing Julio's voice in my head.) 

Since then, he has appeared as a central or minor character in all of Turow's Kindle County novels. I suspect the novel I finished reading last night may be his last appearance.

Sandy Stern, at eighty-four, is retiring from the practice of law. But he takes one last criminal case before he hangs up his gloves -- to represent a life-long friend who is a Nobel-winning scientist, and is now charged with murder and fraud involving a cancer drug he has developed.

Turow then takes us on a ride through the fun house of our lives where mirrors distort perceptions of others and ourselves. Sandy learns things about his friend -- and himself -- that he may never have learned without the artifice of a trial.

In the end, Sandy throws off the shackles of comparing himself to other people, and accepts the fact that he has led a good life. Throughout the novel, the theme of grandchildren plays in the background.

I have already told you one reason I enjoy Turow is that he is not a hack writer of legal pulp fiction. He writes what rightfully can be called literature.

Here is the only example I will provide right now. During the course of the trial, Pinky, Sandy's teenage granddaughter, has discovered that life is not quite as black and white as she thought it was. They have a conversation.

"I mean it's just not fair, Pops. Life isn't fair,"

"Well, dear Pinky," he says, again taking her hand, "it has been fairer to me than to many other people. And to you, too, I dare say, although it may not always seem like that. But in the end, Pinky, we must heed the response of a revered philosopher -- I forget his name -- who was famously asked by a student if he believed life was fair."

"What did he say?"

Stern stubs out the cigar, tightening his grip somewhat on Pinky's soft fingers.

"He answered, 'Compared to what?'"

I have probably seen the last of Sandy Stern -- unless I decide to read any of the Kindle County novels. And this could be the last of Turow's novels. He is only three months younger than I am. He takes time writing his work, and there may not be enough time remaining for him to provide us with another.

That would be fine. All good artists live by one rule.

Leave them wanting more.