Personal Injuries could be technically classified as a legal procedural in the general mystery genre, that is, as a form of suspense story set in courtrooms just as policiers or police procedurals are set in precinct houses or detective bureaus. Looked at formally, the novel certainly fits the popular-culture formula, for it peels back layers of discovery, includes one murder and at least two near-murders, and ends with several dramatic and shocking twists. Turow goes far beyond the basic formula, however, and the writing is at a consistently high level rarely found in popular fiction. Turow's prose style is elegant, employing carefully wrought, sometimes demanding sentences that are nevertheless models of clarity and precision—the temptation is to call them lawyerly, but they are also literary. Dialogue—there is a fair amount—is completely credible without a false note anywhere: the characters speak just as...