Scott Turow is a master of his trade and I have devoured everyone of his books. This again visits Kindle County and the main character is Clarice ‘Pinky’ Granum, the grand daughter of Sandy Stern the lawyer depicted so brilliantly in so many of his previous books.

She is a fascinating character with great strengths as well as foibles and weaknesses and I liked her immensely.

The plot was complex and convoluted and sometimes confused and dragged a bit but as always everything was resolved perfectly.

I held back one star simply because nobody does court scenes better than Turow and there are hardly any, but I still really enjoyed it.

It's been some time since I read anything by Scott Turow and I was expecting a court room heavy drama. There is court room scenes, and there IS a legal case at the heart of this, but it's much more a novel set outside. Clarice ‘Pinky’ Granum is the protagonist in the tale - young, punky, and a lot of other things I'm assuming the author is, not, but I really liked the character and the way she is written throughout the book. And that, at its' heart is what the story is: a character driven piece. It doesn't' have the twisty turny plot points I recall from early Turow books, but that's no bad thing. What it does have is a slow burn, relatively small-scale (in the sense that the stakes for the protagonist are more of a personal development/ achievement nature rather than life-or-death-or-life-imprisonment one and, as a change of pace I appreciated the book for that.
I often find novels by successful and middle aged plus authors cringy when they attempt to replicate 'modern youth (or younger adult) vocabulary and ideologies in their dialogue from or attitudes of their characters, but I found this very readable and non-jarring.
The ending (no spoilers) felt a slightly different thing to the rest of the book but I was fine with that and overall I found this a really good read, - enough so that I'm going to go back and read some of the Turow books I've missed on the strength of it.

For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation – until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation, insisting to Rik that the accusations against her are part of an ugly smear campaign designed to destroy her career and empower her enemies – both outside the police force and within.

I have read other books in this series and really enjoyed them but this one not so much. I really can't even put my finger on why but I know it is partly as the characters did nothing for me and I really didn't care what happened to them which then lead me to care less about the story and what the outcome would be. This was a slow burn and although it picked up 60% into the book, the whole story had lost my attention by then.

I would not say do not read this book, we are all different and many of you may enjoy it. Many thanks to Netgalley , the author and publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest unbiased review.