P resumed Innocent, Turow's first published novel, picks up on some of the same concerns as the autobiographical One L (1977). Rather than focusing on law school, however, Presumed Innocent looks at the legal profession in practice. Turow seems particularly interested in the role that lawyers play in society. The protagonist, Rusty Sabich, a prosecuting attorney, declares, "I am a functionary of our only universally recognized system of telling wrong from right, a bureaucrat of good and evil." Yet, as the novel unfolds, Turow demonstrates how hard it may be to tell the two apart as Rusty's trial for the murder of his colleague and ex-lover Carolyn Polhemus reveals that his guilt or innocence is never really the question, but whether the evidence is sufficient to convict him.

Rusty himself corn-ments that "Hedged by the formalities of the rules of evidence, our truthfinding system cuts off the...