Keep Them Close

Want a masterclass in how to plot an amazing mystery-thriller? David Ellis is your man.

In what I think is his best since 2022’s Look Closer, which was also a 5 star read for me, his personal knowledge of the legal system as a lawyer and former prosecutor are on full display, and I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified at how well he understands how it can be manipulated in the hands of someone who knows how it works!

Allison Brice is a high-powered former prosecutor and now respected defense lawyer in her own private practice, where she’s pulling down a million dollars a year. Her husband Finley is a skirt chaser whose endless failing start-up ideas leave Allison as the sole provider for them and their college freshman son Grayson. 

Luke Rankin is Allison’s older brother. He’s a very successful college baseball coach whose golden boy future as a baseball prodigy was cut short by an accident involving his bike and a drunk driver when he was 12. Trinity Casto is Luke’s love interest and is making a documentary about his life.

When Allison encounters an angry driver one night while driving home, she can’t imagine the cascading effects that threaten to upend everything she’s so carefully built. She also doesn’t initially realize how many connections this event will have to all the other characters I mentioned, and she certainly isn’t expecting someone to be murdered.

One thing she does understand very well is the law. She knows what investigators like her own PI Jessica Harper, aka Harp, and police sergeant Louise Pratt and partner Cutty Sark are looking for in a crime, and she knows how to make sure they find or don’t find what they’re looking for. I’ll just say that I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side!

There’s so much more to this plot that I’m going to leave to the reader to discover, because a book like this deserves all those wonderful moments of surprise. What I will tell you is that Ellis’ attention to detail and plotting is as impressive as I’ve seen and makes him a must read author for me. The way he ties all the threads of this story together is so impressive!

This was an immersion read on my Kindle with the audio from Libby narrated by Robin McAlpine, Sean Patrick Hopkins and Kelli Tager, who all did a great job. If you want a mystery-thriller done right, I can highly recommend this one!

★★★★★ 

Thanks to G.P. Putnam’s Sons, NetGalley and author David Ellis for this DRC to honestly review and to my library/Libby for the audio. This is out now.