The Last Trial

March 1, 2020
Trying his final case at 85, celebrated criminal defense lawyer Sandy Stern defends a Nobel-winning doctor and longtime friend whose cancer wonder drug saved Stern's life but subsequently led to the deaths of others. Federal prosecutors are charging the eminent doctor, Kiril Pafko, with murder, fraud, and insider trading. An Argentine �migr� like Stern, Pafko is no angel. His counselor is certain he sold stock in the company that produced the drug, g-Livia, before users' deaths were reported. The 78-year-old Nobelist is a serial adulterer whose former and current lovers have strong ties to the case. Working for one final time alongside his daughter and proficient legal partner, Marta, who has announced she will close the firm and retire along with her father following the case, Stern must deal not only with "senior moments" before Chief Judge Sonya "Sonny" Klonsky, but also his physical frailty. While taking a deep dive into the ups and downs of a complicated big-time trial, Turow (Testimony, 2017, etc.) crafts a love letter to his profession through his elegiac appreciation of Stern, who has appeared in all his Kindle County novels. The grandly mannered attorney (his favorite response is "Just so") has dedicated himself to the law at great personal cost. But had he not spent so much of his life inside courtrooms, "He never would have known himself." With its bland prosecutors, frequent focus on technical details like "double-blind clinical trials," and lack of real surprises, the novel likely will disappoint some fans of legal thrillers. But this smoothly efficient book gains timely depth through its discussion of thorny moral issues raised by a drug that can extend a cancer sufferer's life expectancy at the risk of suddenly ending it. A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed Innocent.

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March 16, 2020
The ominous prologue, in which Sandy Stern, an acclaimed defense attorney in his 80s, collapses in a federal courtroom, hovers over the rest of bestseller Turow’s impressive legal thriller, his 11th linked to Illinois’s fictional Kindle County (after 2017’s Testimony). In 2019, Stern and his daughter are representing Kiril Palko, a Nobel Prize winner and old friend, who’s accused of covering up deaths resulting from the use of Palko’s breakthrough cancer treatment and then cashing in stocks before news of the fatalities becomes public. Stern, who has vowed that this will be the last case he handles, is aware that both his body and mind are not what they once were. The twisty plot leaves the question of Palko’s guilt unsettled until the very end. While this entry lacks the gut punches of the author’s best books, it’s still a page-turner that makes a trial centered on fraud and insider trading fascinating. Turow remains in a class of his own in conveying the subtleties of criminal defense work while also entertaining his readers. 7-city author tour. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman.

Starred review from April 1, 2020
The time has come for a legendary attorney, 85-year-old Sandy Stern, to try his final case. This time he's defending his longtime friend, Nobel scientist Kiril Pafko, against charges of fraud, insider trading, and murder. Pafko is accused of altering data to conceal a string of deadly allergic reactions in the clinical trial of his groundbreaking cancer medication, and when he learned that a journalist planned to reveal the deception, he sold off shares of his company's stock. Through witness depositions, Sandy learns that the friend he's known for years, and even trusted with his own cancer treatment, has been hiding a dark side: Pafko's workplace affairs have created bitter strife, and a cleverly concealed pattern of pirating other scientists' work forces Sandy to question his faith in Kiril's integrity. In the courtroom, a few early missteps place Sandy in self-described old lawyer probation, exposing in the heretofore indestructible attorney a new and compelling vulnerability. Luckily, his team is up to the challenge, with his daughter Marta's technical acumen and granddaughter Pinky's investigative instincts. Turow has established the gold standard for legal thrillers for decades, and he delivers another bar-raising example of his talent here, with his signature absorbing legal details, cerebral suspense, and fascinatingly flawed characters all on full view.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Turow has been a legal-thriller master since Presumed Innocent in 1987, and his latest finds him in top form.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2019

On the verge of retirement at 85, Alejandro "Sandy" Stern agrees to defend good friend Kiril Pafko, a Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher, when he is charged with insider trading, fraud, and murder. As the trial unfolds, Stern begins to get a whole new picture of his client and wonders how far he will go to defend him. Stern has appeared in every thriller Turow has penned. With a 400,000-copy first printing.

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