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LIFE
SENTENCE
Reviews
"Highly
entertaining and full of satisfying twists."
—Publishers Weekly read
more
"Readers
will enjoy his tightly woven narrative and the exciting turns
the story takes."
—Booklist
read
more
"A
twisty, swiftly-paced second legal thriller puts Ellis into the
ring with Scott Turow."
—Kirkus Reviews
read
more
"Ellis
certainly writes as well as his Georgia colleague [John Grisham],
and his plotting is even sharper."
—Chicago Tribune read
more
"Ellis
balances plot, setting, pacing, characterization and surprises
in just the right measure to create a compelling high-stakes courtroom
drama."
—The Washington Post read
more
"...Ellis
must be considered the leading contender to succeed fellow Chicago
lawyer-author Scott Turow in the literary legal thriller category."
—Fort
Myers News-Press read
more
"...a
tale rich in ironies and littered with enough red herrings to
challenge the deductive skills of the most Holmesian armchair
sleuth."
—Bookreporter.com
read
more
From
Publishers Weekly
LIFE SENTENCE by David Ellis
Ellis
follows up the success of his debut legal thriller, the Edgar
Award-winning LINE OF VISION, with an equally intricate and intelligent
murder puzzle that feels like it's 100% plot, laid out with clean
precision. First-person narrator Jon Soliday, workaholic legal
counsel and best friend to state senator Grant Tully, lands in
the middle of three homicide mysteries (and an oblique blackmail
attempt) in the first 75 pages. First, his protege Bennett Carey
shoots an apparent home intruder-in the back. Then, on a mission
for Senator Tully, Soliday consults with attorney Dale Garrison
on an election issue. Garrison is murdered shortly after the meeting,
and Soliday is fingered as the likeliest suspect. Complicating
the case is a decades-old secret: in 1979, a teenage Soliday and
Tully, on a drunken tear, were involved in a murder that remains
unsolved to this day, and the investigation of Garrison's death
threatens to blow it open. Ellis couples clear, direct prose with
abundant legal detail. Soliday is a laconic and mysterious hero,
adding another layer of suspense. The lack of an obligatory love
interest is notable. Soliday is divorced and lives with a pair
of pampered pugs; brittle ex-wife Tracy blows into the story occasionally
to offer moral support but nothing more carnal. What kind of a
hero is this Soliday, a successful 30-something with no apparent
loved ones? And how reliable a narrator? It's all highly entertaining
and full of satisfying twists.
Copyright
2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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From
Booklist
LIFE SENTENCE by David Ellis
Following
his lauded debut, LINE OF VISION(2001), Ellis's gripping second
novel is a murder mystery chock-full of political intrigue, buried
secrets, and surprising twists. Jon Soliday and Grant Tully have
been best friends since high school. Grant is now a powerful state
senator, and Jon is his chief counsel. Both have successfully
buried a secret that links them. Back in high school, Jon was
accused of murdering a girl he met at a party. Grant's father,
a state senator at the time, helped clear Jon's name. When Jon
receives a cryptic blackmail letter, he fears political repercussions
because Grant is running for governor. Things only get worse when
Jon meets with another attorney, Dale Garrison, and shortly after
their meeting, Dale winds up dead. Jon, who returned to Dale's
office after receiving a call, is implicated and arrested. Bennett
Carey, a lawyer at Jon's firm who also aids Grant, takes Jon's
case, but Jon isn't sure Bennett will be able to effectively defend
him without knowing what happened when Jon was accused of the
first murder. The connection between the two murders runs deeper
than even Jon suspects. Readers familiar with Chicago politics
will appreciate Ellis' references, but all readers will enjoy
his tightly woven narrative and the exciting turns the story takes.
— Kristine Huntley
Copyright
© American Library Association. All rights reserved
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From
Kirkus Reviews:
LIFE SENTENCE by David Ellis
A
twisty, swiftly paced second legal thriller puts Ellis (LINE OF
VISION, 2001, winner of an Edgar Allan Poe Award) into the ring
with Scott Turow. Jon Soliday, legal counsel to state Senator
Grant Tully, discovers that Langdon Trotter, Tully's opponent
in the upcoming governor's race, submitted an invalid petition.
The irregularity will knock Trotter out of the contest-which,
polls indicate, he leads. But Tully tells Soliday that going public
with the information might backfire, making the underdog look
petty. Instead, Tully suggests that Soliday inform lawyer Dale
Garrison about the fake petition and let Garrison use the information
to blackmail Trotter into throwing the race. Soliday hates the
tactic, but not as much as he hates Trotter's conservative politics.
Just before he meets Garrison, however, it's Soliday who receives
an anonymous blackmail note. Hand over $250,000, it threatens,
or "the secret that nobody knows" will go to "the
senator." Soliday sees Garrison, who likes Tully's plan-but,
after the meeting, someone murders Garrison. Since Soliday was
alone in the lawyer's office at the time, he's suspect numero
uno. His plot revving up, Ellis cuts back to 1979. Tully and Soliday,
high-school buddies, party with drugs, booze, and a woman who
comes on to Soliday. After she and Soliday have heavy sex, the
woman is found dead. Did Soliday do it? Is this possible murder
"the secret nobody knows"? Soliday claims he blacked
out and doesn't remember. Return to 2000, as emotionally coiled
lawyer Bennett Carey fights for Soliday. Proceedings appear to
move in Soliday's favor, but then they turn in another direction.
And another. Then another, as Ellis twists matters perhaps one
time toomany. Still, his case clearly shows that clues, like law
and politics, can be turned to cast doubt or favor on anyone.
This one's all about the puzzle (character detail, though significant,
seems familiar and obligatory)-and what a tricky, surprising puzzle
it is.
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From
Chicago Tribune
LIFE SENTENCE By David Ellis
In
LINE OF VISION, which won him an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery
in 2001, Chicago lawyer and political insider David Ellis successfully
violated one of those infamous 10 rules for mystery writers by
giving us a charming, supersmart, first-person narrator who might
have been guilty of the crimes he denied committing.
In LIFE SENTENCE, Ellis ups the ante by making his new first-person
narrator—Jon Soliday, legal counsel and best friend to state
Sen. Grant Tully, who is the hot favorite to be the next governor
of Illinois—such a selfless, square, hard-working nerd that
we can't possibly believe a word he tells us.
In a book that should be must reading not only for fans of intricate,
Turow-like mystery plotting but also for everyone who has ever
thought of running for public office, Ellis alternately soothes
us with Soliday's apparent adoration for Tully and rattles us
with doubts about the senator's honesty and the narrator's gullibility.
We spot (deliberately, of course) one of the villains early on,
as Soliday's protege—a younger, more ambitious lawyer named
Bennett Carey—is accused of overkill for shooting a home
intruder in the back. Then, when Soliday himself is charged with
the murder of a connected (read corrupt) old lawyer, we have to
ask ourselves: Did he really do it? Is he just putting us on with
his story about mysterious phone calls? And what's all this extra
historical baggage about some old murder-rape from 1979, which
Soliday and Tully were involved in? Who does Ellis think he is—John
Grisham?
The answer to that has to be, Yes—with any luck. Ellis certainly
writes as well as his Georgia colleague, and his plotting is even
sharper. The only remaining question is whether the book-buying
public is ready for a hero whose idea of a great Saturday night
date is walking his two cloyingly cute pug dogs.
— Dick Adler
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From
The Washington Post
LIFE SENTENCE by David Ellis
Past
Imperfect
Those of you who fell asleep over Scott Turow's last novel will
want to check out Life Sentence, by David Ellis (Putnam, $25),
the follow-up to LINE OF VISION, which won an Edgar for best first
novel in 2001. Ellis balances plot, setting, pacing, characterization
and surprises in just the right measure to create a compelling
high-stakes courtroom drama. He also takes time to explore the
psyche of lawyers as Turow does so well, but prefers to set his
sights on a different generation, usually young turks still struggling
to find that balance between personal success and unimpeachable
ethics.
In LIFE SENTENCE, political legal adviser Jon Soliday is charged
with the murder of a local rainmaker. He can clear his name only
if he exposes a decades-old criminal incident that involved both
himself and his boss, who is now a popular politician running
for governor. The book is set in an unnamed city very much like
Chicago, and the ward-level politics of the Windy City are apparent
as Soliday picks his way through various alliances and tries to
find out who his friends really are.
However, the political elements matter less than the personal
ones in this nicely layered story. Not only is Soliday forced
to confront his notions of loyalty and friendship; he must also
face a truth that has haunted him for decades, impairing his ability
to reconcile himself to his involvement in the old crime. This
inner battle adds exceptional depth to Life Sentence.
— Katy Munger
©
2003 The Washington Post Company
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From
The Fort Myers News-Press
LIFE SENTENCE by David Ellis
Ellis
weaves tangled web in 'Sentence'
By
JAY MacDONALD
Special to The News-Press
What
a tangled web David Ellis weaves in LIFE SENTENCE the richly plotted
follow-up to his Edgar Award-winning 2001 debut legal thriller,
LINE OF VISION.
Our narrator, Jon Soliday, is legal counsel and longtime friend
to powerful state Sen. Grant Tully, who's about to make a run
for governor of an unnamed Illinois. When Soliday discovers information
that could knock Tully's conservative rival out of the race, the
senator, fearing that such a move might backfire, suggests instead
that Soliday pass the info to lawyer Dale Garrison, who can use
it to blackmail his opponent into throwing the election.
Before
Soliday can meet with Garrison, he receives a blackmail note himself,
demanding $250,000 or "the secret that nobody knows"
will be divulged to the senator. Worse, shortly after their meeting,
Garrison is found murdered, leaving Soliday as the prime suspect.
Soliday
suspects the secret dates back to 1979 when a woman was found
dead after a night of drugs and alcohol with he and Tully. The
case was never solved and neither teenager was charged thanks
to Tully's political connections.
Though
Soliday has been able to put the incident behind him, it still
troubles him that he doesn't remember exactly what happened or
who was involved in the woman's death.
LIFE
SENTENCE is a puzzle whose pieces are so expertly scattered that
you may not recognize them until they're the last best guess.
On
the strength of two strong early works, Ellis must be considered
the leading contender to succeed fellow Chicago lawyer-author
Scott Turow in the literary legal thriller category.
©
Copyright 2003, Fort Myers News-Press. All rights reserved.
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FROM
BOOKREPORTER.COM:
LIFE
SENTENCE by David Ellis
The
windy city (albeit unnamed) is the setting for David Ellis's second
courtroom/ political thriller. In this follow-up to his very successful
LINE OF VISION (2001), Ellis takes us through the shadowy hallways
of a gubernatorial election, mired in unexpected and iconoclastic
revelations about one of the candidates and his closest political
ally.
As
he did in his first book, Ellis gives his narrator a mesmerizing
voice, one the reader is prepared to take at face value. We want
to trust him. We want to believe him and to believe in him. He
appears to be such a nice, honest and humble guy. Jon Soliday
is Senator Grant Tully's Chief Counsel and closest friend. But
a few weeks before the election, he is charged with murder. The
events that led up to and surround the crime explode around a
number of people, who were involved in a rape/murder that happened
twenty years in the past. That tragedy becomes the paradigm around
which Ellis builds his tale. We learn that some of the most powerful
movers and shakers in the state may have reached their lofty perches
as a result of a conspiracy to cover up that long forgotten crime
--- the one none of them ever talked about, the one that took
place early in the summer of 1979. What really happened that night?
And how can something that was "taken care of" so precipitously
at the time have anything to do with the diabolical killing just
taken place?
Soliday
is someone who, despite his erudition, his education, his experiences
and his connections, is caught up in situations that are beyond
his control. And while the reader may empathize or even identify
with him, s/he is forced to question many of the self-serving,
even possibly naive decisions he makes. Ellis presents his readers
with several probing questions: does it matter if choices are
made in the name of truth and justice, but are ultimately fixed
in a void? Are "truth and justice" abstract concepts
to be ignored or twisted to fit a particular situation? What can
we say of a man who refuses to question the vagaries of memory,
guilt, loyalty and human nature? Big issues. Big dilemmas.
LIFE
SENTENCE is an imaginative book that debunks the notion that thrillers
are "only" escape genre fiction. Ellis gives us a large
novel that is propelled by both plot and character and it surpasses
all expectations. Readers will find themselves convinced of one
thing, only to learn twenty pages later that they have presumed
too much. This tactic, in less capable hands, could be disjointed
and clumsy. But here, the author uses this device to create a
very clever scenario that moves along in a pithy manner. And he
proves the validity of the cliché: "… the best
laid plans …" etc. He proposes the argument that human
frailties and blind ambition are the elements that propel people
on a collision course with disaster. And once the detritus of
such calamity is cleared, the landscape is forever changed.
With
the skill of a veteran writer, Ellis segues from time frame to
time frame with perfect grace. He maintains control over the two
stories; infuses his characters with enough humility and chutzpah
to make them believable; and touches upon a wide variety of philosophical
arguments, ranging from the validity of the death penalty, to
notion of male bonding, to the pitfalls of an old boy network,
to the demands of lifelong friendships. How far should someone
feel compelled or pressured to go in order to prove her/his loyalty
to a friend or colleague, he asks.
Fans
of political/courtroom thrillers will find LIFE SENTENCE a tale
rich in ironies and littered with enough red herrings to challenge
the deductive skills of the most Holmesian armchair sleuth. This
is a story that is limned like a mobious strip twisting back on
itself, with drama and deeply felt convictions about paths taken
that lead to destinies unknown until it is sometimes too late.
David
Ellis can feel completely at ease moving into his place on the
shelf alongside better-known writers. He is bound to give them
a run for their money. Enjoy.
— Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
©
Copyright 2003, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
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