I read Presumed Innocent a long time ago and didn't read any of the sequels. I'm not sure why I started on this one at all, actually. I didn't know any of the characters who may or may not have appeared in earlier books of the series. I feel like I may now legally proceed with the review.

I'm not sure if this would count as a genre book. It has police and crime in it so probably, but it transcends the category in that there are actual characters in it. The narrator is barely a character at all, though I gather he was in previous books of the series. It being a book about crime and lawyers, the law is constantly referenced but though it gives us the rules of the game, it is not what determines what is right or wrong, or who wins or loses.

The main character has, in fact, run afoul of the law and is being pressured to turn states evidence (if I am using the legal term correctly). But far from being a bad guy, he is practically the moral compass of the whole story. This is so not because he's perfect or always does the right thing, but because he manages to behave most consistently as a human being.

His FBI handler, disgusted with his lying and manipulating asks him angrily "What matters to you?" with the presumed answer being "Nothing" but he answers, not having thought it through, or ever having entertained the question before, that what matters were the other people whom he cared about. His job was to betray many of them to the FBI and they force him to do so, but in the end, while some get caught and others go free, he becomes the character we identify with and his fate is more important to us than whether the guilty get caught or not, which is usually what novels of this sort are about.

This novel is much more character driven than plot driven and at times the plot takes the kind of turns that make little sense from the standpoint of how some omniscient author might choose to control the situation to further the story. Instead, it frequently seemed almost random, like real life. This feeling is uncommon in genre novels I've read.