Presumed Innocent

Presumed Innocent is a legal thriller by the American writer Scott Turow, published in 1987 and his first novel. It is set among the legal community of the fictional Kindle County, where most of his later books also take place.

Rusty Sabich is the chief deputy prosecutor, and three weeks before his boss faces re-election a colleague from his own office, Carolyn Polhemus, is found murdered. Rusty is given the investigation into her death.

The case turns on him when his boss loses the election and Rusty is charged with the very murder he was appointed to solve. The novel is narrated by the accused rather than by an outside investigator, so the reader follows the trial from inside the defence.

Turow was a practising lawyer before he wrote fiction, and the book helped establish the legal thriller as a popular form. It was adapted into a film in 1990 and into a television series in 2024.