Scott Turow sits in the same swiveling chair inside his Naples home from which he wrote his latest courtroom thriller. He’s surrounded by bookshelves stocked with multiples of the dozen novels he wrote that have combined to sell millions of copies. The most famous of these novels, “Presumed Innocent,” jump-started Turow’s writing career in 1987 and took him to extraordinary places where he met extraordinary people.

Harrison Ford, in the 1990 film, and Jake Gyllenhaal, in a 2024 Apple TV+ series, have each played lead character Rusty Sabich.

Perhaps Ford, 82, soon could play Sabich again. In the new novel “Presumed Guilty,” written mostly from Turow’s home office in Naples, Sabich has aged to 77, but gets pulled out of retirement to defend his fiancée’s son on a murder charge.

But for all the glamour of seeing his work adapted into movies and television shows, meeting the actors and traveling to exotic locations including Italy and Havana, Cuba, Turow said the simple act of sitting in that chair and getting to work on creating a literal world means more than anything else.

“Honest to God, despite all of the wonderful things that have happened to me in my life because of my novels, the best part of it is still writing the books,” said Turow, 75. “When you’re as lucky as I’ve been, to have this long career — the work is here, and the audience is there. And you’re trying, of course. You’re trying to connect with them. My principal experience as a writer is with that; getting it on the page. If you don’t like that part, you’re never going to be a writer.

“If you’re all about the acclaim and seeing the big article about yourself in The New York Times, if that’s all you really want out of it, it’s not going to work. It really isn’t going to work.”

Normal routine, exceptional results

Before settling into that chair, Turow begins most mornings with a routine not different from most: coffee, a light breakfast, reading news online from the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and/or Washington Post. Maybe not all of them each day. But at least two of them. He likes to be informed.

By 8 a.m., Turow heads upstairs for the chair.

“A good day, I’m ready to get done by 1 p.m.,” said Turow, who has yet to start writing the next novel. But that will happen soon. Although he is handling a pro bono case, he mostly retired from practicing law in 2020. Not being in court hasn’t hindered his ability to write courtroom scenes, he said.

“The experience of trying lawsuits is so intense, it’s burned into you like a brand,” Turow said. “Honest to God, I say this, and I mean it. I’m still up on my feet, making objections in my dreams, I really am.”

There are fewer distractions these days — not that he ever allowed those to interfere with his craft.

“I’ve always been able to withstand interruptions,” Turow said. “That’s how I was able to write and practice law for so many years. My great blessing is that I was able to withstand distraction and go right back to where I was. I could literally pick up — if I pick up the phone in the middle of the sentence, I will tune back in and finish the sentence after I’ve spoken with the client.

“I give some of the credit to my high school journalism teacher. A reporter has got to be able to write anywhere. He taught us to compose on a keyboard. You can’t refuse to deal with interruptions; you’ve got to be able to interrupt yourself and write.”

In the mid-1980s, Turow wrote most of “Presumed Innocent” not from that swiveling chair but from a Chicago commuter train while traveling to his attorney job.

“I wrote religiously, every day, for half an hour, on the morning commuter train,” Turow said. “And that’s how I got a great foothold on “Presumed Innocent.” At that period of time, I had to write longhand, in spiral notebooks. They were stolen from my oldest child. There’s a part of “Presumed Innocent” that was written in a Strawberry Shortcake spiral notebook that she must have gotten when she was 3 or 4 years old. But that was what I did.”

The thrills keep coming

In 1986, Turow bought what he described as a 40-pound personal computer. He took the assorted spiraled notebooks and started typing their handwritten contents into the first typewritten draft of Presumed Innocent. Eventually, he pitched it to then-new literary agent Gail Hochman, who had been an editorial assistant to book editor Ned Chase, father of actor Chevy Chase.

Turow and Hochman put each other on the map. “Burden of Proof,” Turow’s 1990 novel, sold even more copies than “Presumed Innocent.” Its publication coincided with a glorious age for the law in pop culture, Turow said, recalling the “L.A. Law” TV show phenomenon. His first hit novel became the Harrison Ford movie.

“It became a world,” Hochman said of Turow’s novels. “And Scott was very comfortable in that world. He got into the groove of the characters that he knew so well. The exciting thing, not just for a reader, but for an agent or an editor [is] at a certain point, you can’t move. You forget who you are. You forget where you are. You are inside the book. You find out there’s some twist in the plot and you are so engaged. You miss a stop at the subway. You stay up too late at night.

“I started screaming at the end of “Presumed Innocent.” I turned to the last page and saw what he was leading up to. And it was so amazing.”

Almost 40 years have passed, and Hochman said she still feels the same excitement when reading Turow’s work.

“The thing that’s amazing with Scott is he writes clearly and definitely and confidently,” Hochman said. “It’s just confidence. He’s not flowery and poetic. You’ve got the story. You’re with him.

“Sometimes the storyline and the characters become so important to you that it feels like real life. For him to maintain the characters and their background and their inner lives and continually surprise the reader with how it plays out — I just think he’s amazing. He has delivered. And some people don’t. They get feeble as they get older, and the books show it. But he doesn’t. It has really been an exciting run.

“I felt the same energy when I read “Presumed Guilty” I felt when I first read “Presumed Innocent.” ” Turow said choosing a favorite novel would be like choosing a favorite child. But he’s happy with the outcome of “Presumed Guilty” and the plot twists he created from that swiveling chair.

“I had a great time writing it,” he said. “I was connecting with the stuff in myself that I wanted to be in touch with.”

Turow conceded the recent attention brought to his work by the “Presumed Innocent” remake may have boosted sales of “Presumed Guilty.” But ultimately, the quality of the story must be there, as well.

“It certainly didn’t hurt,” Turow said. “These things are very hard to measure. Is this book selling better than the book before? Yes. Yes, it enhanced my brand. It’s a great thing for any writer in his 70s to have his or her name in circulation again.”