Mick Malloy is in the thick of it! Miss Jane reviews Scott Turow’s ‘Pleading Guilty’

Instead of merely feasting upon the spoils of crime ex-cop Mick Malloy and his legal partners find themselves in the thick of one, then two, then three, then four …

When Bert Kamin and $5.6 million disappear, Malloy is charged with an undercover search and rescue mission. His future with the firm relies on the outcome. As the investigator, it is Malloy’s tale which we learn from a transcript of his regular conversations with his dictaphone.

So it is amid offshore bank accounts, breathless bodies and moody overweight cops waiting for payback time, that we find an assortment of self exploration, parental chastisement, sexual secret and more breathless bodies, fallen hopes and drunken regrets. This potted personal profile lends a humour to the story which is often overlooked in works of crime and detection.

Turow, over 400 pages, lays a bed of clues and solutions so that, as in real life, all is not revealed in the final chapter. Thus the avid crime reader will find that this work contains more than the usual dose of suspense.

Scott Turow, a partner in a Chicago law firm, has had a short but successful career as an author. His first novel Presumed Innocent won the 1987 Silver Dagger Award and has been made into a highly successful film. He followed this with the acclaimed The Burden of Proof and now a very readable Pleading Guilty.