Life Sentence
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4.0 • 35 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“Ellis sets a new standard with this superb legal thriller . . . . [a] stunning ending.”—Library Journal
In a Byzantine world of big-city politics full of payback and promise, ambition and disgrace. Jon Soliday is legal counsel to a powerful politician-also his childhood best friend—who is running for governor. The two have shared political success and undying loyalty. They also share a dark secret from the summer of 1979: a party that resulted in the death of a teenage girl. Soliday was implicated but, through his friend’s political connections, escaped legal trouble.
Soliday remembers little from that night, but carries an uncertain guilt he can’t shake. Now, as the players from 1979 fall prey to an unknown killer, Soliday is himself accused of murder. And as the puzzle unfolds, the people he most suspects are those he has entrusted with his defense—his ambitious defense attorney and his oldest friend.
A man’s past, both what he remembers and what he fears, has never felt so crushing—and may well leave him without a future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 prot g 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.
