As in Turow's earlier novels, Pleading Guilty focuses tightly on one central protagonist. Like Rusty Sabich in Presumed Innocent (1987), Mack Malloy narrates his own story. However, Turow tries a new narrative technique in this novel. The narrative ostensibly consists of a series of tapes that Mack recorded to serve as a memorandum to the Management Oversight Committee at Gage & Griswell. However, as these tapes progress, it becomes obvious that these tapes record much more than the details of Mack's investigation, they become a confession of the many deficiencies he sees in his own life. He realizes the course that these recordings have taken when he observes, "It seems increasingly obvious, even to me, that I'll never show a word of this to anyone on the Committee. . . . So we all wonder: who am I talking to?" Instead, these recordings become, for him, a way of sharing his own story...