Innocent, Scott Turow

Evidently it has been 20 plus years since Turow's first novel, Presumed Innocent, hit the market. Now the same characters, older, are involved in an other trial; the young lawyer wrongly accused of murder in the first novel, is now a 60 year old judge accused in the second. One review I read said this book was flawed but gripping. I had a hard time getting into this book, I think because the characters were not as carefully drawn here-possibly because the reader should have known them from before, and I did, but they were not that familiar. And I would have thought Sabich learned his lesson better the first time also. But this is a great story, with surprising twists all the way to the last pages. I can not remember if the first book was told only from Sabich' perspective, but this one is not. We get to meet Sabich son Nat in this book-he must have been a very small child in the first book, but now he is a central character.

Caught, Harlan Coben

Talk about your convoluted! I loved this, but I sure didn't know until the end what was happening. Really a page turner, and I like the way he writes. I'd recommend it.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, Stieg Larsson

I have now read all three of the novels in this trilogy. All three of them are violent; this one takes up at the cliff hanger ending of book two. All three deal with the covert workings of the Swedish secret service, with the world of newspapers, and with abuses of legal authority, especially in the case of the heroine who is the voice of abuse against women. I loved the writing; his characters are memorable. Each had a distinctive voice, and each character had a chance to speak. My only problem with the stories was keeping the characters straight but I think that was because the Swedish names were similar, and hard for an English speaker.
One of the reviews I read said that Larsson is now as well known as the characters in his books. His books have become a publishing phenomenon. Larsson was the editor-in-chief of the anti-racist magazine Expo, and an expert on anti-democratic right-wing Nazi and extremist organizations. He died suddenly in 2004, having just delivered his third manuscript to his publisher. One way or another, Lisbeth Salander's story is finished.