Line of Vision

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Add David Ellis's Line of Vision, a first novel by a practicing attorney that is devious, surprising, and compulsively readable, to the list of recent first-rate legal thrillers written by lawyers -- Stephen Horn's In Her Defense comes to mind, as does Sheldon Siegel's exceptional Special Circumstances.

Line of Vision takes place in the fictional midwestern town of Highland Woods. Its narrator and hero, Marty Kalish, is a slightly misanthropic investment banker who has recently begun a clandestine affair with wealthy socialite Rachel Reinardt, wife of a prominent local surgeon. According to Rachel, Dr. Reinardt is a wife-beater, a man given to drunken rages and periodic outbursts of physical and sexual abuse. On a cold November night, Marty -- who has more than his share of voyeuristic impulses -- stands outside the Reinardt house and witnesses a particularly savage beating. Driven past endurance, Marty forcibly intervenes. His intervention sets the stage for everything that follows.

Withholding crucial information until the very end, Marty's narrative jumps ahead to the aftermath of that nocturnal encounter. Marty recounts his elaborate attempts to provide himself with a plausible alibi, but only alludes to the central events of the evening: Dr. Reinardt's death and Marty's efforts to remove -- and hide -- his body. By the following morning, the incident has become a local cause celebre. Rachel provides investigating officers with a deliberately vague description of a masked intruder, and Marty resumes his normal routine, desperately hoping to avoid police scrutiny. He doesn't. Eventually, rumors, circumstantial details, and a self-incriminating statement lead to Marty's arrest, and he finds himself on trial for his life.

The trial itself is a complex, brilliantly rendered affair in which Ellis -- and Marty -- slowly peel back later after layer of deceit, gradually illuminating Line of Vision's central mystery: What really happened at the Reinardt home on that fateful November night? En route to his series of climactic revelations, Ellis displays an uncommon facility for devious plotting, courtroom pyrotechnics, and narrative misdirection. He also displays a genuine feeling for character, and his central portrait of the conflicted, psychologically damaged Mary Kalish dominates the novel and accounts for much of its surprising emotional depth. Line of Vision falls slightly short of the standard set by its primary model, Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent, but it's a solid, consistently entertaining debut, a harbinger (I hope) of even better things to come.

--Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

San Francisco Chronicle

After just about every permutation of the legal thriller has been served up by the likes of John Grisham and Scott Turow, Ellis arrives with a surprisingly fresh take on the genre.... The resulting novel crackles with unexpected twists and some nifty surprises -- it's like Patricia Highsmith with an extra shot of adrenaline.

From The Critics

The best suspense novel I've read in a while...surprising.

James Patterson

The best suspense novel I've read in a while...surprising.

Publishers Weekly

Despite elements that strain belief, Chicago attorney Ellis's debut succeeds as a wicked courtroom thriller featuring a devious main character who finds ways to manipulate the legal system to suit his needs. Investment banker Marty Kalish stands accused of killing Dr. Derrick Reinhardt, whose abused wife, Rachel, was Kalish's lover. Kalish, the police allege, shot Reinhardt so he could have Rachel all to himself as well as put an end to her physical torment. A devilishly subversive thinker, Kalish hires the best lawyers in town, asks them what his strongest defense would be, then fashions his explanation for the killing to suit that strategy. His tactics work well until it becomes apparent that the police and prosecutors are not quite as gullible as he expects them to be. No problem. Kalish simply changes his story, adding another twist involving one of Reinhardt's neighbors. In the end, Kalish finds out that even more cunning minds than his were churning away as he scrambled to convince the jury of his version of events. Ellis's fine use of the first-person narrative brings out the full flavor of Kalish's personality and helps drive the plot into areas of character where courtroom thrillers rarely venture. He stretches credibility at a few points--for example, Kalish, who faces the death penalty, is allowed to remain free throughout his trial--but the exciting payoff proves ample compensation. (Feb. 19) Forecast: Ellis comes on strong here, writing a twisty, spellbinding story with a subtext: that our legal system is vulnerable to producing results that defy both logic and the facts. Expect healthy sales from thriller readers eager for a fresh voice and a cynical point of view--if they are alerted that Ellis offers those in spades. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

When his illicit romance turns fatal, an investment banker struggles with the impossible task of protecting both his inamorata and himself. One minute Marty Kalish was standing outside Rachel Reinardt's den, enjoying the striptease she always performed for him Thursday nights; the next minute he'd broken into the den, drawn irresistibly in by the sudden apparition of Dr. Reinardt raping his wife; and the minute after that, he was standing over Reinardt's dead body, promising Rachel that he'd do whatever it took to shield her from the ugliness of the crime just before he lit out with the corpse virtually under the eyes of the first officers on the scene. After burying the body and disposing of the evidence against him, Marty returns to his daily routine, but now he's in a fog: All he can think of is how long it'll be before the police come after him. Sure enough, he's questioned, arrested, indicted, and put on trial for the murder of Derrick Reinardt—a trial whose outcome is severely biased by the fact that Marty actually confessed to one of the cops interrogating him, though he had the presence of mind not to repeat the confession for a stenographer or a tape recorder. As his high-priced legal team considers one defense after another, however, resourceful Marty obligingly keeps changing his story to suit each one, plotting all the while how he's going to deal with the elusive eyewitness who says he saw Marty pull the trigger. It all comes down to an extended courtroom sequence in which lawyers battle for pages upon grueling pages over the most minute points, with Marty's and Rachel's lives both hanging in the balance. ThoughEllisdoesn't sustain the breakneck pace of hisobvious model, C.W. Grafton's classic Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, his stylish debut comes up with a couple of neat moves that Sue Grafton's father never so much as thought of.