Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal. You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today I'm very happy to have with me, Scott Turrow.

He's the author, most recently of personal injuries published by Faris Strauss and Giroux.

He made his fictional debut with Presumed Innocent, followed by the burden of Strauss and Giroux. He made his fictional debut with presumed innocent,

followed by the burden of proof, pleading guilty, and the laws of our fathers. Now, I find

these books to be remarkable because while they are full of the legal machinations for which they've become famous,

their real subject, it seems to me, has to do with the way the legal procedure represents

or misrepresents the depth of character underneath the procedures.

In this case, we have a main character,

Robbie F-E-A-V-E-R, sometimes pronounced even by him,

fever, and he is a liar.

Now, we all know that lying from the stands leaves one legally culpable,

but this book is ultimately about why a person would lie

and what might make him morally enviable, or at least not judgeable, because of his behavioral deficits.

Now, where did this character come from?

How did you build him?

Robbie favors most direct literary ancestor is the whiskey priest in Graham Green's The Power and the Glory,

which was a novel that sort of levitated me from my bed in my college dorm and, you know, first taught me about moral

complexity in characters. I had the idea, certainly I have autobiographical antecedents

in this book.

...