Ordinary Heroes, by Scott Turow

A powerful thriller that strips bare wartime's moral choices

Nobody could accuse Scott Turow of resting on his laurels. One might think that after hijacking the legal-thriller genre from reigning king-of-the-hill John Grisham (admittedly after the latter's born-again Christianity led him into some very peculiar territory), Turow might be content to plough this particular furrow. Instead, Ordinary Heroes startlingly proves that Turow has grown impatient with a genre showing signs of exhaustion. It's debatable, in fact, whether Ordinary Heroes is a crime novel at all.

The gritty and plausible legal detail we look for in Turow is here in the novel's early part, but soon jettisoned. Turow's period is the 1940s, and the final, bloody months of the Second World War. The author's sharp evocation has an assurance barely hinted at in his earlier books. Yes, we've got the idealistic young lawyer once again as protagonist, but if your heart sinks at this most shopworn of legal-thriller clichés, be patient until David Dubin encounters the horrors of the European front.

The novel is told in flashback, narrated by Dubin's son Stewart after his father's death. A reluctant Dubin, previously a small-claims injury lawyer, is dispatched to bring charges against Robert Martin. This celebrated war hero has cut all ties and is now incommunicado, ignoring messages from his superiors. He's gone loco, and a general with the Lewis Carroll-style name of Tweedle has sanctioned his neutralisation.

If this synopsis suggests that Turow has been watching Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, his ambitious novel shows that he has bypassed adaptations and supped full on Joseph Conrad's nightmarish original, Heart of Darkness. As Dubin comes to know the renegade Martin and the terrible struggle in his psyche, he finds the demands of his mission unsustainable - particularly as he becomes dangerously involved with Martin's ex-lover, a woman prepared to be utterly ruthless in defence of those she has loved.

All this is handled with intelligence and sensitivity by Turow; he may lack Conrad'srigour, but there are nuances in his writing a world away from such contemporaries as Grisham. When Stewart finds his father's journal, it brings home the terrible moral consequences of wartime behaviour. It also helps him come to terms with the difficult relationship he had with his father. The novel may strain to accommodate its themes but, by and large, it carries off a vivid period narrative in trenchant fashion.