One L is Turow’s debut book, but he primarily went on to write fiction—with his novels often set in the legal world that he grew to love. Turow’s first novel, Presumed Innocent (1986), became an instant bestseller and was adapted into a popular 1990 movie with Harrison Ford as the lead. The book spawned two more in its series—the most recent published in 2025—and became a benchmark in the genre of “legal thrillers.” Many of Turow’s 12 other novels are set in the fictional Kindle County, based on his hometown of Chicago and the surrounding Cook County, Illinois. Other novels are set Boston, Massachusetts, where he went to Harvard. Turow employs the technical skills he learned in school and on the job as a federal prosecutor to create realistic legal cases within atmospheres of suspense and drama. Turow’s fiction work stands among other big names in the legal thriller genre, like John Grisham (A Time to Kill, The Firm) and David Baldacci (Zero Day, A Calamity of Souls). One L has been compared to The Paper Chase by John Jay Osborn Jr., which tells the fictionalized account of a first-year law student going through many of the same experiences Turow went on to write about.

Turow wrote only one other nonfiction book after One L—Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty (2003), about his experience working with death-row clients and on death penalty reform. Both books are considered “memoirs,” but they also have an educational component that blurs the lines between memoir and informational non-fiction. As in One L, Turow follows a standard, linear timeline of events that he experienced, but he breaks up his recounting with both emotional reflections and technical explanations. In One L, Turow knows that many of his readers haven’t experienced student life at a law school, so he offers lengthy definitions of unique legal terms and practices as his narrative unfolds. One L also blurs the lines of memoir in its characters: Most are based on real people Turow interacted with, but they are fictionalized to protect their identities. In the Preface, Turow asserts that the book is not a novel, differentiating it from his later work.