From their bland fictitious milieu (Kindle County, a vaguely urban Midwestern area) to their nondescript, airport-bookstore titles (Presumed Innocent, The Burden Of Proof, The Laws Of Our Fathers), Scott Turow's novels begin on a blank slate, a placid surface of normalcy waiting to be punctured. His latest may as well be jacketed in a paper bag and labeled Legal Procedural #4, but its anonymity does little to obscure Turow's formidable gifts as a writer. Equal parts incisive character study and deftly orchestrated suspense thriller, Personal Injuries centers on Robbie Feavor, a slippery ambulance-chaser caught channeling money into a secret account, from which he draws bribe money for judges on the take. Faced with a heavy prison sentence, Feavor agrees to take part in an elaborate FBI scheme to contrive phony "borderline" cases, bait the suspected judges into taking cash for a favorable decision, and record the transaction with wires and surveillance cameras. Working under the nom de guerre Evon Miller, an agent goes undercover as his new paralegal and, to her surprise, discovers a more complex and deeply tormented man than his smugly confident demeanor had led her to expect. Rather than succumb to the expected romantic clichés, Turow takes the one thing Feavor and Miller have in common—FBI-scripted roles in an increasingly dangerous sting operation—and uses it as a yardstick to measure the growing distance between identity and performance. But even if its psychological complexity were set aside and its story reduced to nothing but twisty, Grisham-esque plot contraptions, Personal Injuries has enough well-calibrated turns to fill a stack of best-selling also-rans. Though Turow holds the dubious distinction of being the first in a long line of attorneys to exploit their profession for literary intrigue, he still proves himself without peer.