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Legal thriller author David Ellis' day job? Appellate court justice

By Lee Rawles

August 29, 2024, 8:41 am CDT

Justice David W. Ellis has served on the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District for nearly 10 years. But readers may know him better as author David Ellis, bestselling writer of more than a dozen legal thrillers.

Ellis had enjoyed creative writing as a youth, he tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast.

But during his college and law school years, he was focused solely on his legal career path. It wasn’t until he had been in practice for a few years that this changed. During a vacation at the beach, he suddenly decided that he was going to write a novel—and once that goal was set, he worked relentlessly toward it. And in 2002, he won a prestigious Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for that first novel, Line of Vision.

Both branches of Ellis’ career have seen tremendous returns. He made national news in 2009 as the prosecutor of the impeachment of then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich before the state senate. He was the youngest-serving justice in 2014 when he joined the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District, which serves Chicago and Cook County. And along the way, he published 11 novels, including the four-book Jason Kolarich series. He was a finalist for the ABA Journal-sponsored Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2012 and 2013. He has also co-written nine books with James Patterson, the latest of which (Lies He Told Me) will be released in September.

In this episode, Ellis and Rawles discuss his July release, The Best Lies. The germ of an idea that became The Best Lies started off with the notion of a main character who was a diagnosed pathological liar.

When the book opens, Leo Balanoff, a criminal defense attorney in Chicago, has just been arrested for murder. Police have collected DNA and fingerprints at the scene that are a match for a college-era bar fight that Leo was charged for, and the victim had an ugly history with one of Leo’s clients.

Over the course of The Best Lies, twists and turns across multiple timelines and through multiple points of view begin to reveal what really happened. Ellis weaves a tale combining corporate espionage, violin concertos, police corruption and the Estonian mob.

Ellis also discusses his writing process, his 3:30 a.m. wake-up time, the similarities in his creative and legal writing, and how his judicial ethics concerns sometimes impact his editorial decisions.