Limitations

Limitations

by Scott Turow

Picador Paperback Originals, HK$101

Rusty Sabich, wrongfully accused of murdering a fellow Kindle County prosecutor nearly two decades ago in Scott Turow's debut procedural Presumed Innocent (1987), is now chief judge of the appellate court in a system that nearly convicted him. In the political world of the US legal system, it sometimes pays to be a victim.

Sabich returns in Limitations, which appeared earlier this year as a 16-part serial in the weekly New York Times Magazine. Republished as a 197-page novella, Limitations manages to say a lot, in typically tight Turow style, about victims on both sides of the law, and how the judicial system attempts to maintain a balance that reflects contemporary views about right and wrong. It's also about reconciling prevailing justice with past misdeed, 'justice' being 'no better than approximate, a range of tolerable results'.

Turow has developed a strong cast of characters over the course of his six Kindle County novels, and crossover references make for an increasingly rich back story. The return of Sabich is most welcome.

The central character here, though, is George Mason, 59, presiding judge in the appeal of four defendants convicted of the rape of a fellow student seven years earlier while at a high school football party. The girl concerned, drugged unconscious, knows she was assaulted, but not by whom, and so doesn't report the assault. One of her assailants later shows a videotape of the vicious attack to his college fraternity buddies. One of them calls the police. The tape is seized as evidence of a crime and the four are tried and sentenced to six years for sexual assault.