Testimony
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4.2 • 21 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Scott Turow, #1 New York Times bestselling author and "one of the major writers in America" (NPR), returns with a page-turning legal thriller about an American prosecutor's investigation of a refugee camp's mystifying disappearance.
At the age of fifty, former prosecutor Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his law career, his wife, Kindle County, even his country. Still, when he is tapped by the International Criminal Court--an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity--he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. Over ten years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished. Now for the first time, a witness has stepped forward: Ferko Rincic claims that armed men marched the camp's Gypsy residents to a cave in the middle of the night--and then with a hand grenade set off an avalanche, burying 400 people alive. Only Ferko survived.
Boom's task is to examine Ferko's claims and determinine who might have massacred the Roma. His investigation takes him from the International Criminal Court's base in Holland to the cities and villages of Bosnia and secret meetings in Washington, DC, as Boom sorts through a host of suspects, ranging from Serb paramilitaries, to organized crime gangs, to the US government itself, while also maneuvering among the alliances and treacheries of those connected to the case: Layton Merriwell, a disgraced US major general desperate to salvage his reputation; Sergeant Major Atilla Doby,a vital cog in American military operations near the camp at the time of the Roma's disappearance; Laza Kajevic, the brutal former leader of the Bosnian Serbs; Esma Czarni, Ferko's alluring barrister; and of course, Ferko himself, on whose testimony the entire case rests-and who may know more than he's telling.
A master of the legal thriller, Scott Turow has returned with his most irresistibly confounding and satisfying novel yet.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Scott Turow trades his familiar domestic terrain for a remote refugee camp in Bosnia, where 400 Roma have been buried alive. Eleven years after the massacre, the Hague’s International Criminal Court taps U.S. attorney Bill Ten Boom to untangle what happened, prompting terse run-ins with ferocious paramilitaries, disgraced veterans, and secretive witnesses: basically, the kinds of shady characters Turow draws best. And while there’s no courtroom drama, Testimony doesn’t skimp on the tension, supplying a harrowing kidnapping sequence and a cagey femme fatale to keep us hooked.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Turow (Identical) movingly evokes the horrors of the Balkan wars in this gripping thriller that nonetheless falls short of his best work. Bill Ten Boom, the former U.S. Attorney for Illinois's Kindle County, leaves his white-collar defense practice to take a position with the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigating a 2004 war crime. Ferko Rincic has stated that he survived an attack on his Roma community in Barupra, Bosnia, which ended with 400 men, women, and children herded into a cave that subsequently collapsed due to an explosion. Ten Boom agrees to try to verify Rincic's account and identify those responsible for the massacre. His work brings him into contact with a femme fatale barrister from the European Roma Alliance, who located the crucial witness to the case, and a disgraced American general who commanded NATO troops in Bosnia. Yet another Turow lead suffering a midlife crisis, Ten Boom comes across more as a variation on a theme than as an original character. Author tour.
Customer Reviews
Testimony
I thoroughly enjoyed Testimony, just as I have previous Turow books. Although a work of fiction I believe the book, while gripping in its character development and plotting, also sheds useful light on the ethnic rivalries and brutality in the Balkan region following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and also the difficult lives and unique culture of Roma people in the region which I assume Turow based on his extensive research. I now mostly read for pleasure and recreation. It is an added bonus when I also learn something significant from the experience as I did with Testimony.