Due to unforseen circumstances I missed my spot on the audiobook tour from Friday. My apologies! So two day late, I am bringing you my review for Suspect by Scott Turow. Thanks to Danielle for my invite and Ulverscroft and Isis Audio for my audiobook to write this review.
Lucia Gomez is a female police chief in a man’s world and she’s walked a fine line to succeed at the top. Now a trio of police officers in Kindle County have accused her of soliciting sex for promotions and she’s in deep.
Rik Dudek is an attorney and old friend of Lucia’s. He’s the only one she can trust, but he’s never had a headline criminal case. This ugly smear campaign is already breaking the internet and will be his biggest challenge yet.
Clarice ‘Pinky’ Granum is a fearless PI who plays by her own rules. Her 4-D imagination is her biggest asset when it comes to digging up dirt for Rik but not all locks are best picked.
It’s cops against cops in this hive of lies. And it will take more than honeyed words from the defence to change the punchline and save the Chief from her own cell.
I didn’t realise that Suspect is part of the Kindle County series at first, but even with that in mind I totally enjoyed this crime novel. I had no issues keeping up with the story and the characters.
Chief of Police Lucia Gomez is accused of soliciting sex for promotions by three police officers in Kindle County. A woman who has fought harder and better than her male counterparts to get where she is, now she is in serious trouble and Rik Dudekis, a small town attorney and Lucia Gomez’s old friend has the case. Clarice Granum, known more usually as Pinky, is a P.I who works for Rik and it’s her job to dig for anything to help in the case, but will she dig too far?
It took about 5 minutes of listening to the book and I thought Pinky was the coolest character already. The story is told from her perspective and I was at home in her head immediately. Her musings about her neighbour and everything else just endeared her to me.
The descriptions of the characters were so vivid and detailed that I could picture them as I listened. The narration by Robert G.Slade was sublime. I did wonder in the first few minutes about a male narrating a story being told from Pinky’s view. a
After realising that I was smirking at Pinky’s inside thoughts and her idioms I realised he was a perfect narrator.
The American setting did make me pause for thought as I wasn’t sure if I would fully enjoy a story told with all the Americanisms and everything else but it really didn’t matter. I found I learned as I listened and that something I love, being entertained and educated at the same time. I was instead so immersed in Pinky and the case I forgot I was really sat in the UK!
Being a Scott Turow book I was expecting an excellent courtroom thriller and that’s exactly what I got. The investigation itself made for a fast paced intriguing read, then the tense courtroom scenes themselves just mad the book for me.
Scott Turow’s characters are as I would expect, so three dimensional. Pinky herself was my favourite along with Lucia. A woman who, as a woman on the force, finds herself in a terrible position, but is determined to fight her way out of it as best she can.
This audiobook has made me so interested in reading more of Scott Turow’s books. I was so enthralled in this story. A brilliant legal thriller that totally immerses the reader in that world.
Author bio
Scott Turow was born in Chicago in 1949. He graduated with high honors from Amherst College in 1970, receiving a fellowship to Stanford University Creative Writing Center which he attended from 1970 to 1972. From 1972 to 1975 Turow taught creative writing at Stanford. In 1975, he entered Harvard Law School, graduating with honors in 1978. From 1978 to 1986, he was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, serving as lead prosecutor in several high-visibility federal trials investigating corruption in the Illinois judiciary. In 1995, in a major pro bono legal effort he won a reversal in the murder conviction of a man who had spent 11 years in prison, many of them on death row, for a crime another man confessed to.
Today, he is a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal an international law firm, where his practice centers on white-collar criminal litigation and involves representation of individuals and companies in all phases of criminal matters. Turow lives outside Chicago.
Non-Affliated Links:
The Reading House (CDs): Suspect – The Reading House
sharonbeyondthebooks.uk 