The Burden of Proof cover art

The Burden of Proof

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Burden of Proof

By: Scott Turow
Narrated by: Robert G. Slade
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £17.45

Buy Now for £17.45

About this listen

'Scott Turow is master of the legal thriller' – The Guardian

Full of suspicion and half-truths, The Burden of Proof is Scott Turow's second Kindle County legal thriller. His first Kindle County thriller, Presumed Innocent, is now a major TV series from Apple TV+ starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

One afternoon in late March, Sandy Stern, a brilliant, quixotic defence lawyer, returns home to find his wife Clara dead in the garage. They had been married for thirty-one years.

Her suicide note leaves him just four words: 'Can you forgive me?' But on 6 March, Clara had expected to live . . .

Praise for Scott Turow:

'Head-and-shoulders above others in the legal thriller genre he created' – The Observer

'A brilliant chronicler of contemporary America' – The Sunday Times

'Turow does legal thrillers better than anyone else' – Irish Independent

'Worthy to be ranked with Dashiell Hammet or Raymond Chandler' – The New York Times

'No one writes better mystery suspense novels than Scott Turow' – Los Angeles Times

 Crime Crime Thrillers Political Spies & Politics Thriller Thriller & Suspense Espionage Law Fiction Suspense

Critic reviews

A delight . . . over 500 pages of suspicion, allegation, detection, false confessions and half-truths . . . tied up so tightly that you're holding your breath in anticipation . . . hugely readable
Expert and excellent . . . The Burden of Proof is a new sort of novel – a detective story full of people on the make, on the break or settling for second best: a riveting tale
A wonderful read from tight start to taut end
All stars
Most relevant
superb difficult to put down, narration is superb with great range of accents and register

yet another superb thoughtful slow burn thriller

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The combination of an excellent writer and a skilful narrator makes this book an unmissable treat. I found myself listening into the early hours over many nights, reluctant to emerge from the magic of such a talented storyteller.

Sandy Stern is a complex and beguiling main character, not your usual dashing hero by any means. He's balding, overweight and introverted, full of doubt and insecurities despite his successful career as a defence attorney.

He gradually puts together reasons why his reserved wife killed herself as he looks back over their life together, while dealing with a complex fraud investigation into his shady brother-in-law's brokerage firm.

He takes a fresh look at his adult children and doesn't like everything he sees in them. He ventures into new relationships after more than thirty faithful years with the same woman and realises he didn't know his wife as well as he thought he did.

Totally absorbing story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very well read but far too much reflective narrative for my taste, rather boring in parts.

good story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Definitely not in the same league as Presumed Guilty. The story is interesting but the author added way too much boring stuff like long winded excursions into the past of the characters which do nothing for the story. There are endless passages on the characters’ angst and inner turmoil which get to be really annoying. I wished he had just gotten on with the story, but now I’m giving up halfway through the book…

Some good parts, but still boring

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have enjoyed some of Scott Turow's books but this one I am having to redeem. The length of the book is often why I consider buying audio books as I get through so many but this one could easily have been a third of the length and was, consequently, far too irritating to stick with. The story in itself is interesting but the gratuitous description of meaningless things just did for me in the end. More distressing still is the fixation on the sex that the central, late middle-aged, recent widower finds, quite literally, just dropping into his lap! I'm happy that someone can write about a sex life being fulfilled in later life but not hour after hour of it. All that together with interminable points of legal minutiae made it unlistenable for me.

Far too padded out

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews