Review by New York Times Review
IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE to visit Kindle County, Scott Turow's shadow version of greater Chicago, which he has been building and populating since he all but created the modern legal thriller in 1987 with "Presumed Innocent." One of the many satisfactions of the string of assured and gripping novels since then has been returning to the county's courtrooms and barrooms, catching glimpses of characters who were central to earlier works and hearing echoes of the compromises that marked them. But not every trip to Kindle County is equally rewarding. This latest one, "Identical," is stuffed with so many themes and reversals that readers may end up feeling the way you do after a long family meal with too much talk and food: disoriented, logy and a little nostalgic. Turow has many gifts. He might consider being a little more parsimonious in doling them out. Yes, he wants to stretch, and who can blame him? He long ago proved that he is a fine stylist whose sly, grave sentences are merciless tools for probing a criminal justice system unequal to the task of sorting out responsibility for human frailty. So he has set himself new challenges, touching on areas of the law where he is less sure-footed and working with a classical template apparently meant to give his tale literary weight. The stew gets awfully rich. The novel takes its inspiration from the myth of Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers born to Leda after she was raped by Zeus. "For those familiar with the myth," Throw explains in an afterword, "the parallels between it and my story should be plain, as is the fact that I did not allow the old tale to be any more than a fabric on which I did my own embroidery." Still, that embroidery can be distracting. There are frequent references to twins in mythology, Shakespeare and the Bible, in what seems an attempt to give more heft to a perfectly good thriller, though one that takes a little time getting airborne. It starts with an italicized flashback to a fawn party on Labor Day weekend in 1982, and the passage is as dense as a standardized reading-comprehension test. Turow introduces us to many of the main characters, most of whom bear the names of Greek gods or variations on them. The patriarch hosting the party is Zeus Kronon; his daughter is Dita, short for Aphrodite. Among the guests are her boyfriend, Cass Gianis; his identical twin, Paul; and their mother, Lidia. The day ends in Dita's murder. The scenes set in the book's present, in 2008, are altogether more inviting. They start with a parole hearing, with a man's liberty at stake, in a low-ceilinged room with folding chairs and card tables. "The power of the state, frequently spoken about as if it were a dread disease, was often most notable for the utter lack of majesty with which it was exercised," Turow writes. Paul is now running for mayor, and the plot is set in motion when the dead woman's brother accuses Paul of a role in the murder. Raymond Horgan, whom we met as Kindle County's chief prosecutor in "Presumed Innocent," is the campaign's lawyer, and he has views about campaign finance law. "He's an individual exercising his First Amendment rights," Horgan says of the brother, Hal Kronon, who is preparing to take out ads restating his accusation. "At least as long as there are five clowns on the Supreme Court who think that spending money is a form of unrestricted free speech." "An old fellow in a flannel shirt" at a town-hall meeting seems to set out Throw's own views on this state of affairs: "If rich people could spend without limit trying to decide elections, we were basically back to where we started, when the only voters were white men with property." Paul responds to Kronon with a defamation suit of the sort that Oscar Wilde and Alger Hiss came to rue. But the suit is implausible. Politicians in the United States almost never sue for slander or libel, partly because American law puts public figures to the nearly insurmountable burden of proving not only that the statements they object to are false but also that they were made with knowledge of that falsity or with serious doubts about their truth. Here they were made by a murder victim's brother and were plainly earnest, whether true or not. Filing a defamation suit also subjects plaintiffs to intrusive questioning and investigation. No sensible politician, and certainly not one harboring secrets, would risk such a thing. But this candidate's advisers prefer the courtroom to the television set, reasoning that "elections are about myths, about making them think you're a god, not a mortal." Such random references to mythology run through the book, and they can be heavy-handed. I'm pretty sure, moreover, that there was more smiting than suing on Mount Olympus. Paul, a former prosecutor and successful plaintiffs' lawyer, should know better, and he does. "I've been in enough courtrooms to know once you file, you lose all control," he says. "I should have laughed it off and called Hal a right-wing goof." This sensible reflection makes his decision to sue all the more unconvincing. Still, the rich, sharp courtroom scenes, always Turow's specialty, are the best parts of the book. He is particularly good at showing how judges use minor rulings to nudge a case to their preferred outcome. Elsewhere, the narrative bounces among several characters' perspectives, which gives it a jumpy and inconsistent quality, one heightened by questions about the twins' identities. When it settles on Paul, though, there are nice moments : "You chose this life," he thinks, "you walked a tightrope with only gumption and a parasol, the chasm chanting its siren song below. But there was no point in daring when the only outcome was bad." The book's momentum relies on two characters largely unencumbered by myth. One is Evon Miller, a former F.B.I. agent in a volatile lesbian relationship. She is well drawn, but the star of the book is Tim Brodie, an 81-year-old private investigator and one of Turow's most appealing creations. Brodie is beset by age and regrets, and he speaks in cadences reminiscent of Elmore Leonard. "I'm suspicioning it's probably true," he says of one theory. He wonders of an older woman "what illusions made her put on stretch pants." The novel grows more lurid and pulpy as it proceeds, with enough running around and twists to make a soap opera writer blush. These are followed by yards of expository dialogue that clears up most but not quite all of the confusion that preceded it Soliloquies are uttered by characters whose sudden urge to confess is not wholly explained. "Identical" has many parts and moods. It has treats and shortcomings, like a trip to a city with a lot of different neighborhoods. One might wish "Identical" more streamlined, but that would not do justice to the bustling landscape that is Kindle County. ? A justice system unequal to the task of assigning responsibility for human frailty. ADAM LIPTAK covers the Supreme Court for The Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Turow continues his obsession with innocence (his breakout first novel, Presumed Innocent, 1987, was followed after 20 years by Innocent). In this strained reworking of the theme, the mystery centers on identical twins, Cass and Paul Giannis, who both attend a party at the home of their father's greatest rival, Zeus Kronon, in 1982. The mythological references are many, most seeming to underscore the simple point that the book is about twins. The pivot for the action is the 2008 release from prison of Cass, who confessed to the 1982 murder of his girlfriend Athena Kronon (daughter of Zeus). Cass has been destroyed by prison; Paul is a state senator and mayoral candidate. Matters get further complicated when an ex-FBI agent and a PI reopen the murder case on their own, convinced that Cass is innocent. Much of this book is weighed down by unnecessary accounts of characters' lives from childhood on. The interesting part has to do with the forensics of fingerprinting and DNA, though the 2008 time frame limits what can be done with that. All in all, a disappointment from a much-loved author. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Turow may have drunk from the well of innocence one too many times, but his fans are still thirsty.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Turow (Innocent) is not at the top of his game in this contrived whodunit. In 2008, Paul Gianis, an Illinois state senator, is leading in the race to become mayor of Kindle County, but a decades-old tragedy threatens to scuttle his political ambitions. In 1982, Dita Kronon, the girlfriend of his identical twin brother, Cass, was beaten to death. Cass pleaded guilty to the crime, but on his release after 25 years in prison, Dita's affluent brother, Hal, alleges that Paul was also involved in the murder. Paul files a lawsuit for defamation, hoping to minimize the damage to his political prospects, but he can't stop Hal's investigators from unearthing deeply buried secrets. Assured prose (e.g., "Mario Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose, but as far as Paul could tell they were both trips to the abattoir, just different entrances") compensates only in part for an overly intricate solution likely to disappoint even diehard Turow fans. 5-city author tour. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Best-selling author Turow's (Innocent; Presumed Innocent) personal and professional fascination with identical twins inspired this story, based loosely on the myth of Castor and Pollux, of Paul and Cass Giannis and the convoluted relationship between their family and their longtime neighbors the Kronons. In 2008, Paul is running for mayor of Kindle County, while Cass is being released from the penitentiary, having served 25 years for the murder of his girlfriend Dita Kronon. However, Hal Kronon, Dita's grieving brother, hires ex-FBI agent Evon Miller and Tom Brodie, a former homicide detective, to reinvestigate her murder. Dr. Hassam Yavem, an expert in genetic research, conducts a thorough DNA analysis and reveals startling results-unearthing long-buried secrets involving family betrayal, incest, and chilling deceit. VERDICT Turow's well-crafted legalese does nothing to hide the bizarreness of this tale of identical twins. The roller-coaster events that unfold within and between these intertwined families slowly reveal off-the-wall and improbable behaviors. Simply too much to believe. [See Prepub Alert, 4/1/13.]-Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Much-practiced legal proceduralist Turow (Innocent, 2010, etc.) steps onto Joseph Campbell turf in his latest mystery. Turf is everything in the world Zeus Kronon--a charged name, that--has carved out for himself in Kindle County, turf that, of course, figures in Turow's oeuvre as Yoknapatawpha County figures in Faulkner's. Rolling in drachmas, he has just one problem: a wild maenad of a daughter, full name Aphrodite ("There have not been many occasions he has seen Dita when she is not smashed"), who has eyes not just for one of a pair of twin brothers, Paul and Cass Gianis, but both. That spells trouble, as twins in mythology always do. Fast-forward a few decades. Cass has been doing time for her murder, while Paul, "followed by two scrubbed young underlings," re-enters the scene as a legal whiz and rising politico. Enter the Sapphic former FBI agent Evon Miller, who, working for real estate magnate Hal (that is, Herakles) Kronon--and who minds mixing Shakespeare with Aeschylus?--is determined to get to the bottom of whether Cass or Paul did poor Dita in so brutally. It would spoil the story to do more here than whisper the name Medea in what she eventually turns up. Turow has obvious fun with his mythological conceit, giving, for instance, a local GOP power the sonorous, if unlikely, name Perfectus Elder; and if sometimes the joke wears a little thin, the process of discovery takes nice and sometimes unexpected twists. Amid the supermodernity of DNA tests, the austerity of case law and the tangles of contemporary politics (Hal, horrors, even threatening to vote for Obama), Turow never loses sight of the ancient underpinnings of his story, with a conclusion that places Hal, Zeus, Hermione and Aphrodite in the vicinity of Olympus, their true neighborhood. Classic (in more senses than one) Turow.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
