The Burden of Proof #3

As I mentioned earlier in my blog, the book was made into a mini TV series, and deservedly so, as between this books intricate plot and its twists and turns, it was as if the book was made for the big screen. If you look at my second blog about this book, I had predicted that the two different storylines in the book, which were the protagonists Sandy Stern’s personal life and his life in law, that they would come together. I had thought that Sandy’s Stern’s personal life would have a prevalent effect on his legal career, and then vice-versa. These two different storylines also seemed to be correlated throughout the second half of the story, as if to add severity to emotions felt through parts of the story. An example of this would be on page 366, when Stern discovers his dead wife’s wedding ring, he exclaims “This is undoubtedly the ring she received the first time she was engaged.” Then, a mere 14 pages later, Stern gets increasingly frustrated with his client Dixon, as Dixon keeps avoiding his calls. Stern even tells Dixon’s secretary “Tell him if he leaves town without making time to see me I shall resign as his lawyer.”

I was correct about the two separate storyline merging by the end. The case is solved in Chapter 46, pages 464 -478, in which Stern hears the whole story from someone close to him, who had been withholding the information from him the entire time. Overall, I would say this was a very interesting read, it utilizes several literary elements such as parallel structure and foreshadowing. Though I said it was an interesting read, it can also be a bit of a drag. It is over 500 pages, and these aren’t all action-packed pages. I would recommend this book to anyone in high school, however you will enjoy it much more if you start the book with interest and background knowledge in the field of law. I would have found this book much more interesting and less confusing if I was well-versed in that field.