Pleading Guilty

By: Scott Turow

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Welcome back to Kindle County, where skies are generally gray, the truth is seldom simple, and the partners of a top-drawer corporate law firm are counting on one world-weary attorney to save them from front-page scandal and financial ruin.

When Gage & Griswell's star litigator suddenly disappears - along with $5.6 million of its most important client's money - the assignment of locating both goes to Mack Malloy, a 50ish ex-cop, almost ex-drunk, and partner-on-the-wane at G&G. Mack's search takes him into the treacherous inner sanctum of his firm and through the shadowy heart of the city itself, on a path that soon runs him up against his longtime nemesis - the odious Pigeyes - as he plucks the threads of a dangerous web of corruption, deceit, and murder.

An edge-of-the-chair journey into an ominous and enthralling world, Pleading Guilty is at once a brilliantly constructed puzzle, a relentlessly entertaining character study, and as suspenseful a story as any listener could want - a masterpiece of midwestern menace that could come only from Scott Turow.

©1994 Scott Turow (P)2010 Hachette

Critic reviews

"Though every element of the novel is polished and professional, the charisma of Mack's narration is its triumph. Add that to a taut, twist-filled plot, expert pacing, colorful and well-rendered supporting characters, and an appealing whiff of larceny, and Turow surpasses Grisham hands down." ( Publishers Weekly)

Not the best I have read but better than the last

This book, "Pleading Guilty" was a good, solid story. I did have a hard time knowing who was which character in the story. It was very slow, an example is at one point I fell asleep while listening and had to go back to where I fell asleep. The last quarter of the book was the best part of the book.

The performance was very good. I will check out the author and see what else he has performed..

So all in all this is a good book that you could do other things while listening to this book. Typically I enjoy books where you have to think and not do a bunch of other things while listening/

Captured until the last line

Classic Scott Turow he captures your attention until the very end. He writes so well. I listened to this on Audiobook and it just enhances the experience. Make sure to read his books in order as it will make the experience much better.

The narrator does a decent job...

However, this is the type of book that, when I am reading in paper or digital form, I tend to make notes to help keep track of the characters. Pleading Guilty is not as overwhelming as some but the lawyers in the practice start to blend after a few chapters. The story isn't half bad but most certainly it is not even an eensty teentsy bit uplifting.

Decent listen but nice and long.

It doesn’t have the suspense and thrill of your normal mystery but great subject and lots of very interesting history! It is more on the emotional side side.

Whiny narcissistic main character

On the positive side, the book was mildly entertaining. On the negative, the whole plot is told by the main character who was self centered, blamed others for his lack of success and had little integrity. There was no chance the reader could figure anything out because it was all laid out by this immature main character who was not likable at all. The characters were all shallow and not well developed. I was being generous to give this 3 stars. Although I have liked some other books by this author.

Great novel

I read this novel years ago, and didn't remember liking it that much. But I enjoyed it immensely with this re-reading. The characters are complex and the plot has plenty of twists and turns. The ending is a bit weak, although it would work extremely well in a film version. But that's just a little bit wrong with a great novel. The narrator is top-notch.

Turow Weaves a Great Legal Thriller

Part of the Kindle County series, Pleading Guilty has some characters and events from books earlier in the series but it stands fine on its own. The protagonist is seeing his mariage, parenting, substance abuse recovery and legal career fall apart in mid life. His assignment to find a missing partner and the $5 million that went missing at the same time gives Turow the opportunity to explore the souls and lives of big city lawyers, cops, thugs and fixers through the eyes of this protagonist whom the reader ends up liking better than he can ever manage to like himself.

No, I didn't miss with the mouse

I'm a Turow fan. He's a superb storyteller and writes knowledgeably about the law and lawyers. I feel like I personally know most of his characters. But I would do my best not to know the central figure in this book (I just finished it and I can't even remember his name). This is a fine story, well told. The narration is very good. But I could not stand the protagonist. I had to listen to hours (no exaggeration) of this guy whining about what a loser he is in all areas of his life. In real life, a guy like this would send me running inside 20 minutes. Excuse me, I have some important sleeping to do. If he were actually a colleague of mine, I would hide every time I saw him coming at me in the hallway.

Guilty of the Turow Formula

This is my third Turow book after Presumed Innocent and Innocent.

Upon finishing this book, it occurred to me that all of Turow's books that I've read up to this point feature a middle aged white guy lawyer who either creates a scandal or is called on to investigate suspicious activity. The narrator then spends over half the book ruminating over a failed marriage or troubled
upbringing.

These obsessive thoughts don't prevent our main character from having sexual encounters. Of which there are many, since women are drawn to a mysterious guy with a traumatic past.

The plot moves along sluggishly with occasional hints as to who did what, but none of the information feels irrefutable. Turow's characters always act like the don't know--or care--about plot points until the final chapters of a story. Then the main character suddenly becomes competent and connects a ton of evidence that up to that point felt circumstantial at best.

The overriding feeling one is left with after reading the Turow books I mentioned l above, as well as Pleading Guilty, is that no characters face lasting consequences for their behavior.

Robert Petkoff is a great narrator and he's best playing sarcastic jerks. As other reviewers have said, Malloy is not a likeable character, so the narration makes up somewhat for the book's failings.

All in all, not so great.

Would you try another book from Scott Turow and/or Robert Petkoff?

Yes. I think that Robert Petkoff is wonderful. I have already searched his work on the Audible site, and will listen to a couple of his other narrations. It is Scott Turow that I have more reservations about. He can certainly write, but the plot of this book is just plain incomprehensible. There are so many paragraphs of exposition towards the end of the book, it is almost as if he knows how confusing the whole thing is. In the acknowledgements he thanks a number of people. I find it hard to believe that none of these people told him the truth: that the story in the book is, as a whole, fine, but in the details it is a gigantic mess.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I don't know where I would start. This is a very good question, though. There is the material and the style to create a book that is understandable and suspenseful, and fun to read. But what we have here is so doubled- and tripled-back that it adds up to nonsense. There are some good characters, like the protagonist Melloy and his lawyer/sometime girlfriend Brushy. However, there are so many other characters and plot twists that the whole thing is like a huge tangle of yarn, so to speak. Sorry, I really didn't intend that one. In any case, you could cut out at least a third of the material and the story would be much better, much less confusing, and more believable.

Which character – as performed by Robert Petkoff – was your favorite?

Hard to have a favorite when I didn't really like the book, but I guess Melloy will have to serve. He is a neurotic mess and something of a sociopath. The book is his story, in the form of a dictation that is wholly unnecessary, that doesn't move the plot in any way, and is just one of many of the things that could be tossed out. It would accomplish one of my favorite things: addition by subtraction. You could just simply tell the story, for heaven's sake.

Could you see Pleading Guilty being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No. No one would understand it.

Any additional comments?

No. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.