Innocent, by Scott Turow

An audio book.

Told from several points-of-view, this novel is the story of  "Rusty" Sabich, a judge in Turow's fictional Kindle County. As the story begins, Sabich's wife has died. For some reason, Sabich does nothing upon discovering that she is dead, and sits with her lifeless body for twenty-four hours before calling his son.

As the story unfolds, we learn about Sabich's life, and the suspicious things that have happened in his past. We hear the story from Tommy Molto, Sabich's old colleague and sometime enemy, who is now the prosecuting attorney, who comes to suspect that Sabich may have murdered his wife. Other bits are narrated by Sabich's son, and by Anna, his former lover.

The plot is complicated, and fascinating. Turow has spun another great Kindle County legal mystery, and I enjoyed every bit of it.

Washington Post Review

Little Demon in the City of Light, by Steven Levingston

Washington Post Review

Maureen read this book and recommended it to me.

It's interesting in many ways, and wasn't much of a chore to read. A glimpse of the 1890s, a time when civilization was in transition. Hypnotism and early neurology plays a part in this story, in which a young woman, Gabrielle Bompard,  has been an accomplice to murder, and the question arises, was she controlled by her lover, Michel Eyraud? Had he hypnotized her, instructing her to assist in the foul deed, effectively removing her will, and thereby making her innocent by reason of hypnosis? Had his post-hypnotic suggestions caused her to lie and fail to remember important details of the case?

For me, the entire story was overshadowed by the horror of the guillotine, which was still in use at the time. There is something especially evil about State-sanctioned murder, even when done in revenge for a crime as horrid as the one committed in this story.