Turow takes a few turns
Intensity, and sexual tension, mingle in thriller
Escaping Kindle County seems to have had a rejuvenating effect on novelist Scott Turow and his attorney hero, 54-year-old Bill ten Boom, who gets the case of a lifetime at The Hague and some mind-blowing sex along the way.
“Testimony” (Grand Central) — which, don’t get me wrong, is quite entertaining — sometimes veers into Cialis ad territory. After all, what’s more urgent: middleage male sexual angst, or the possible massacre of 400 gypsies in a refugee camp after the Bosnian war?
Bill, who goes by “Boom,” has left his marriage and packed up his Illinois law office, and is wrestling with the age-old “Is that all there is?” question when he’s tapped by the International Criminal Court to investigate the massacre claims. Is Ferko Rincic, apparently the sole survivor, telling the truth when he testifies that armed, unidentified soldiers rounded up hundreds of Roma in 2004, herded them into a cave and set off explosives?
It’s 2015 and Boom, who narrates this tale, has to unearth the facts buried in that cave. Was a war crime committed?
Dark, unlikely fodder for a summer thriller, perhaps, but Turow’s lively prose and terrific cast of supporting characters make “Testimony” one for the beach bag. This is a guy who knows what he’s doing: Turow has been crafting intricate, bestselling legal thrillers dating back to his blockbuster wifedunit, “Presumed Innocent” (30 years ago!).
So now Boom, a good guy who really is a bit of a drip, is in Holland, feeling “flighty as a teenager” post-divorce. (And yes, ten Boom has Dutch roots, which will figure into this labyrinthine story.) Watch out Boom! Here comes Esma Czarini, the va-va-voom Roma legal advocate who has only to breathe the word “Bill” to ensnare our horn-dog hero. (Cue cringeworthy sex scenes.)
Out of the bedroom, Boom, who once was the chief federal prosecutor in Kindle County, has to perform like a legal eagle. Plenty of people are throwing him shade, among them Layton Merriwell, a former U.S. major general who lost his gig in a Petraeus-like sex scandal, and the fast-talking, foul-mouthed (and hilarious) lesbian Sgt. Maj. Attlia Doby, who was in Bosnia with U.S. troops when the Roma disappeared. The suspects pile up: NATO? The U.S. Army? Laza Kajevic, the missing former leader of the Bosnian Serbs?
A screenworthy subplot involving the whereabouts of the chilling Kajevic (seemingly modeled on Radovan Karadžic) puts our Everyman hero in the kind of danger mild-mannered lawyers don’t encounter in Kindle County. Boom wanted to shake up his life. He got it.
“Testimony” is a fun ride, an odd thing to say about a novel that casts new light on Bosnian war atrocities and sketchy American arms deals, as well as midlife crises among smart (but stupid) white guys. A weird, sometimes eyeball-rolling mix, but it works.