Scott Turow surprised himself with a new story about Rusty Sabich.M. Spencer Green/Associated Press
No writer should begin a story without knowing exactly how it ends, according to a rule especially sacred to crime writers, required as they are to end every book with an answer to the eternal question of whodunit.
Luckily for readers, Scott Turow ignores it. A practicing lawyer and real-world master of court procedure, famous for the devilishly intricate plots of his novels, Turow began writing his latest, Innocent, long before he knew where it was going - or even whether or not it was a murder mystery.
The process was "a little bit weird," the author admitted in a recent interview, preparing for a three-stop Canadian tour that will open with an appearance at the Calgary Central Library Thursday night. It is a story he has now told often, but still can't quite figure out.
The novel began, Turow said, with a dreamlike image he jotted down on a Post-it note and stuck on his desk: "A man is sitting on a bed on which the body of a dead woman lies." It was "a man sitting there with this complex, confounded, somewhat bereft expression," the author recalled in conversation, "and this body behind him under the covers."
For Turow, the mystery is why he kept the note stuck to his desk instead of filing it away or crumpling it up with a shrug. "There wasn't anything beyond that single image, so it didn't even seem to me to have narrative content at that point," he said. "It was a little peculiar."
But months later, he read the note again and realized in a flash that the mysterious figure was Rusty Sabich, the hero of his blockbuster first novel, Presumed Innocent, and the body under the covers was his troubled wife Barbara, notorious for her own role in the earlier drama. Thirty years after he first conceived the vivid characters that propelled his groundbreaking first novel, they suddenly reappeared to take hold of his imagination.
And that was all the impetus he needed. "Once I realized who the man was, there was an entire story in that sentence," Turow said. He began writing immediately, not knowing whether or not Barbara was murdered or even whether Rusty would stand trial for the deed, as he had decades earlier for the alleged murder of a lover.
What he knew was that his hero had risen to become chief judge of the appeals court in his Chicago-like city, and that he was back in the arms of a new lover. He wrote reams about the love triangle - much of it subsequently discarded - before he understood where it was taking him. "I still had no clue exactly what the answer to the question was," Turow said. "Was Barbara murdered, and if so, who did it?"
That's the same answer, of course, that readers in huge numbers are currently devouring Innocent to discover. The author's adventure in writing Innocent is evident in every chapter, with the ultimate answer as apparently surprising to him as it will be to readers who follow along.
"This risks sounding unbelievably arrogant," Turow said, describing his unorthodox method, "but I think the vitality of the books, and the vitality of the characters, comes from the fact that I really conceive of them thoroughly before I try to shoehorn them into some pre-existing plot. The plot that emerges is really an outgrowth of the characters, and it's revelatory of them."
Turow's literary accomplishment, which now includes nine novels, more than justifies any presumed arrogance. Just as impressive is the legal mind that makes his novels so clever and credible. Innocent brings both those talents together in a consummate whole, exemplified by a central cross-examination - Sabich does stand trial again, facing his old nemesis, prosecutor Tommy Molto - unequalled in the annals of courtroom drama.
A distinguished criminal defence lawyer in his own right, Turow, 61, continues to divide his time between the bar and his books, maintaining his friendship with such legal stars as Eddie Genson, who defended Canadian tycoon Conrad Black in his 2007 trial, and enjoying the fruits of his long involvement in the public life of his native Chicago. Such as his appointment by newly elected Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to head up the state's first ethics commission.
That was "a positive experience," the author claimed, despite the fact that the governor himself proved so corrupt he was deposed and barred from ever holding public office again. "It was like carrying a piano up 10 flights of stairs," the novelist said.
Today, he is devoting his political energies to the presidency of the Authors Guild as it struggles to enforce intellectual property rights in the digital age. "But overall I define myself as a writer, and I like it the best," he said.
Why?
"It's fun to play every day with your imaginary friends," he explained. "There's a freedom in it and a childish joy that's not available in a lawyer's life."
He added that he is currently "poking around" with an idea for another book that has entered his imagination unbidden, like the imagistic idea for Innocent. "I'm a little puzzled by it because it seems pretty different to me," he said. "But I may go ahead and write it anyway. I'm not sure that resisting something because it seems like a bad idea is a good idea in itself."
Lesser writers have simpler formulas. But for Turow, master of the clockwork procedural, the secret of success is to go with the flow.
Scott Turow ( www.scottturow.com) appears at the Calgary Central Library Thursday night at 7 p.m. as part of WordFest; at the Toronto Reference Library on June 10 at 7 p.m. and at the Ottawa Writers Festival in October.