By Scott Turow – Grand Central Publishing, 2020
Loyal fans of Scott Turow will remember meeting attorney Sandy Stern 34 years ago in Presumed Innocent (1986), a novel that launched Turow’s career and, some claim, created the genre that we now call “legal thrillers.”
Alejandro “Sandy” Stern, now 85, has decided to retire. For his final case, his client is a long-time friend, Kiril Pafko, a 78-year-old, Nobel Prize-winning doctor who discovered the very drug, g-Livia, that put Stern’s own cancer in remission. But some patients developed a fatal reaction, and the Feds accused Pafko of a range of crimes, from insider trading to murder.
Turow, 71, a practicing attorney who takes mostly pro bono cases himself, explains the courtroom drama for laymen, but in The Last Trial what he does best is show a character who was once in total command of the courtroom accepting both the good and bad of his own aging. Stern has an occasional blip of memory loss and a fatigue that isn’t about sleep. He works alongside his accomplished daughter, Marta. Recognizing her father’s shortcomings, she silently signals him if he’s veering off the mark. Marta decides this will be her last trial as well, which likely makes it a little easier for her father, although they both want to retire with a win.
Readers are introduced to another family member. Despite a prolonged and confounding adolescence, Stern’s granddaughter, Pinky, shows real promise as a private investigator, leaving us to think court may not be adjourned after all.
