In his new book “Presumed Guilty,” Scott Turow revisits one of his most famous characters: 35 years after the events of “Presumed Innocent,” Rusty Sabich is on the other side of the courtroom as he defends his fiancé Bea’s son Aaron on murder charges.
While there was speculation that the new novel might also serve as the second season for the Apple TV+ series “Presumed Innocent,” Turow told TheWrap that neither of his sequels about Rusty Sabich — including the 2010 novel “Innocent” — would have worked as a follow-up to the David E. Kelley and JJ Abrams-produced series.
“‘Innocent’ is set 20 years later, so it would be hard to do it as a follow on to the prior series,” he said. “Also, Peter Sarsgaard said from the beginning, ‘I’m not doing sequels.‘ And as it happens, his character, Tommy Molto, was at the center of the story in ‘Innocent,” so there were a lot of reasons that didn’t happen,” he explained.
The question that “hovers over” his new book is “whether you can really have a second or even maybe a third act, and do a better job than you did in the prior go-rounds.”
As the novel opens, Rusty has made a new life in fictional Skageon County, where he’s a respected judge and is engaged to the principal of the local grade school. “He’s sort of come back to life,” said Turow of the character.
A number of factors complicate the case: His would-be stepson Aaron is a Black man in a rural predominantly white community and the victim is his girlfriend, Mae, who was white and the daughter of one of the town’s most prestigious families. Aaron also has a prior drug conviction and appeared to be fleeing the scene of the crime.
“There’s a lot that counts against Aaron, and it starts with what all criminal defendants have in common, which is that judges can tell juries whatever they want about a presumption of innocence, but the reality is, everybody knows how our system works,” said Turow, who retired from his own law practice in 2020. “Most people who are accused are guilty, and so jurors come into a courtroom, in that mindset that this guy probably did it.”
Despite his misgivings that defending Aaron will destroy his relationship with Bea, Rusty takes the case. “He’s kind of the choice by default, even though I think most people would say representing a soon-to-be family member is a terrible idea. But the law talks about a rule of necessity in some cases where the ordinary rules get set aside. Because there’s no way out of this. And this is a rule of necessity situation,” the author explained.
Turow admitted he hasn’t yet read the book that Season 2 of “Presumed Innocent” will be based on, Jo Murray’s debut novel, “Dissection of a Murder.” “My publisher told me it’s a good book, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten,” he said.
He also has a fairly hands-off approach once one of his books has been optioned. “I’ve been very well served by both adaptations of ‘Presumed Innocent’ and frankly, by all the other films that have been made from my work. There’s nothing that I’ve sat there and just closed my eyes and gritted my teeth about.”
While he said he loves Alan Pakula, who directed the 1990 film “Presumed Innocent” starring Harrison Ford, he felt the series was more faithful to the book.
“The book has a kind of darkness to it that Alan did not want to bring to the screen and the series does not shy away from,” he said. “It emphasizes not only the brutality of the way that Carolyn was murdered, but the way there’s kind of an undertone of sadism and Rusty and Carolyn’s relationship.”
Despite the fact he hasn’t done a lot of sequels, Turow was surprised to find that his books, most of which are set in made-up Midwestern Kindle County, are considered a series whether he intended them to be or not.
“Sometimes somebody is in the background in a book, and then they leap up to the foreground in a subsequent book. To some extent, you can argue they’re all sequels or part of a series. I never thought of it that way, to tell you the truth,” he said. “And then I saw a listing on Amazon that referred to the current novel that was coming out, as Kindle County Book Number 9. And I’m like, “Huh?”
He laughed, “I have my own little universe. Whether anybody else populates it, besides me, I don’t know.”
“Presumed Guilty” is out now from Grand Central Publishing. Season 1 of “Presumed Innocent” is now streaming on Apple TV+.
