From the bestselling author of Presumed Innocent comes Testimony, Scott Turow’s most twist-filled thriller to date.Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his career, his wife, even his country. Invited to become a prosecutor at The Hague’s International Criminal Court, it was a chance to start afresh.But when his first case is to examine the disappearance of … examine the disappearance of four hundred Roma refugees – an apparent war crime left unsolved for ten years – it’s clear this new life won’t be an easy one . . .Whispered rumours have the perpetrators ranging from Serb paramilitaries to the U.S. Army, but there’s no hard evidence to hold either accountable, and only a single witness to say it happened at all. To get to the truth, Boom must question the integrity of every person linked to the case – from Layton Merriwell, a disgraced US Major General, to flirtatious barrister, Esma Czarni – as it soon becomes apparent that every party has a vested interest and no qualms in steering the investigation their way . . .
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This book is different from the usual books Scott Turow writes but it is written so well that I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. He is still one of my favorite authors!
TESTIMONY is an exciting legal thriller, the protagonist handles his mid-life crisis by walking out on everything he’d thought was important to him: his wife and two young adult sons, his law career and his home. He ends up in Brussels working for the International Criminal Court. And the adventures begin, it is a page turning thriller. Layers of deception create unforgettable characters and the plot shifts create palpable tension. It was good book to read while being housebound. Mr. Turow is an excellent a writer, Testimony took me on a wild and exciting adventure for a few days.
Listened to the audiobook – when I downloaded it – 14 files – Wow – a long one. I had driving for a business trip to do, so it worked out well. I liked the narrator – nice loud voice, easy to understand. The story kept me interested. Will ther be a follow up?
This Scott Turow novel has all the elements that make his other novels good and some that make them not always so good. It’s set in The Hague where the main character, Bill ten Boom (Dutch name), a former U.S. Attorney in Turow’s fictional Kindle County, has accepted assignment as a prosecutor investigating an alleged war crime. The International War Crimes Tribunal is centered there but the Americans never signed off on the treaty establishing it nor do they agree to allow it to operate in the U.S. or subject U.S. soldiers to its jurisdiction. The alleged victims are a colony of Roma (gypsies) massacred during the Bosnian War. The questions is by whom? Bill and an intrepid Belgian investigator set out to find the answer and bring the perpetrators to justice. The possible suspects: A Serbian commander with a reputation as a vicious megalomaniac, a local gang, U.S. soldiers outraged over the fact the Roma may have stolen a cache of U.S. weapons that led to the death of a cadre of U.S. soldiers. The plot is twistier than a box of pretzels and heavily dependent on a great deal of knowledge and research Turow must have done about the workings of the Tribunal, the Roma people, the Serbs, Croats, NATO, and the U.S. Military. His works are ten levels more sophisticated than the average crime novel where the author doesn’t even understand the concept of jurisdiction. I couldn’t explain it to you if I tried and don’t want to spoil it for you, but I can say it is full of many colorful characters of many different nationalities. They’re almost all very likeable, but don’t trust any of them.
So what complaints do I have? Only one: Turow can’t write about sex without making it sound terribly unappealing, but he insists on putting a lot of it in his novels. We could stop the population boom by making everyone read his books. There must be a word for the style – somewhere between tacky and tawdry. There are seven pages of words in my Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate between them but none of them seem appropriate.
He has yet to disappoint!