Level – Intermediate (4)
Scott turow
  Main Characters 
             Sandy Stern – Was  Clara’s  husband  and  he  was  a  lawyer. 
               Clara Stern – She  was  Sandy’s  wife.  
                Peter – Sandy  and Clara’s  son,  was a doctor. 
                Marta – Sandy  Clara’s  older  daughter  and  she  was  a  lawyer  like  her  father. 
                Kate –  Sandy  and  Clara’s  younger  daughter,  her  husband  was  John. 
                Silvia – She was Sandy’s sister and Dixon’s wife. 
                Dixon Hartnell – He  was  a  very  rich  business  man  and  he  owned   
                                                  a  big  company  called  Maison  Dixon  or  MD   
                                                  that  sold  a  lot  of  different  things. 
                                                  Sandy  was  his  lawyer,  Dixon  was  married  to  Silvia. 
                John – An  excellent  football  player  but  poor  student,  after  university  he  got  married 
                             with  Kate,  and  Dixon  gave  him a job at his company   (MD). 
 General idea 
 The story is about a lawyer called Sandy Stern that returned home  
            one day from his trip in Chicago. 
            He was in Chicago for two days and before he left, everything  
            seemed fine.  Now as he stood at the front door of the house, 
            everything was very quiet, no sounds from the radio, he called his 
            wife name, Clara, but there was no answer.  Finally he found her in the  
            garage.  she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car with the engine 
            running and her head lay back against the seat with her eyes closed and 
            her mouth open.  Sandy immediately made two phone calls,  
            first to the police then to his son Peter who was a doctor in the same town.                                 
            Sandy had no doubt what’s happened to his wife. 
            Later on that day, the house was full of strangers, police and ambulance men. 
            Sandy had known that his wife dead. 
 The police started to investigate Sandy about what happened, later the 
            policemen had told Sandy that Clara dead (Sandy was known that). 
            All the time the FBI had given subpoenas to MD some customers 
            for information about MD because he (Dixon) was often in trouble  
            with government officials and always Sandy had to rescue him and to  
            talk with their lawyers. 
            Since then the police started to look for clues in Sandy’s house. 
            They only found a letter that in it had written “Can you forgive me ?” 
            One day Sandy woke up in the morning and went to kitchen to make him 
            coffee and he saw a lot of letters on the table that were addressed to Clara. 
            He hadn’t opened them, he looked through them and found one with Westlab 
            Hospital on the envelope.  Inside was a bill for a doctor’s test but Sandy didn’t  
            know what it was for. 
            when Clara’s parents died they left their money to Clara by a cheque  
            (about $850,000) and it was stolen.   
            Since then he started to go to places like the hospital and searched things. 
            He also had a fight with Dixon and since then Sandy is not Dixon’s lawyer. 
            Since then Dixon got into troubles.  Finally Sandy found the reason why 
            Clara killed herself and the reason was she was caught with Herpes (illness) 
            and the doctor did her tests in Westlab Hospital and he was Sandy’s neighbor, 
            Nate and the cheque was stolen by Dixon. 
            Finally in the end Sandy married Helen.  It was going to be difficult 
            for them to be happy family again. 
            Clara and Sandy had been married for thirty-one years. 
 The best part                                            
            The best part was the last part that everything became known. 
            That Clara died from illness and not from murder. 
            Because in the story everything was mixed up and I was confused  
            and in the end everything became known, that the cheque was stolen by 
            Dixon and it is a kind of good ends because Sandy married again and 
            he was happy (well not so happy). 
           The worst or saddest part  
               There are no worst parts but there is sad part in the start that  
           Clara died in the garage because I don’t like when people talk  
           about dead people (who did ?).  
            recommendation                                   
               I recommend the book “The  Burden  of  Proof “  because 
            that book belongs to voltage and investigation section and I love 
            that kind of books.  It’s the same like X-Files in T.V and many 
            children love to watch that program so they would love to read that book. 
 I enjoyed it very much