David Ellis Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

David Ellis writes legal thrillers, psychological suspense, domestic crime, and Chicago-centered mysteries. He is also a judge, and his legal background is especially visible in books built around trials, unreliable defendants, political corruption, attorney-client privilege, and the question of how much a lawyer can know without being able to prove it.

Ellis has one principal solo series, the four-book Jason Kolarich sequence, plus a substantial group of standalone novels. He has also co-written several thrillers with James Patterson, including the Billy Harney trilogy and the two-book Emmy Dockery sequence.

The fastest way to choose your first David Ellis book

• Line of Vision: Start here for Ellis’s earliest solo legal thriller and his Edgar-winning debut.
• The Hidden Man: Begin here if you want all four Jason Kolarich novels in order.
• Look Closer: Choose this for a twist-heavy domestic thriller built around marriage, betrayal, money, and competing deceptions.
• The Black Book: Start here for Billy Harney and Ellis’s Chicago police collaborations with James Patterson.
• Invisible: Begin here for FBI researcher Emmy Dockery and the two-book serial-killer sequence.

Jason Kolarich books in order

Jason Kolarich is a Chicago-area criminal defense attorney and former college football player. His cases are legally complicated, but the more important continuity comes from the deaths of his wife and infant daughter, his relationships with investigators and colleagues, and the consequences of cases that repeatedly become personal.

1. The Hidden Man (2009): Jason’s childhood friend Sammy Cutler is accused of murdering the man believed to have abducted and killed Sammy’s young sister decades earlier, and Jason must defend him while an anonymous benefactor tries to control the case from behind the scenes.
2. Breach of Trust (2011): Jason investigates the murder of confidential informant Ernesto Ramirez while grieving the deaths of his wife and daughter, only to find himself forced into an FBI corruption probe reaching toward the governor’s office.
3. The Wrong Man (2012): Homeless Iraq War veteran Tom Stoller is arrested with overwhelming evidence linking him to a young paralegal’s murder, but Jason begins to suspect that the traumatized veteran has been deliberately framed.
4. The Last Alibi (2013): Eccentric James Drinker hires Jason before police have even accused him of serial murder, and the lawyer gradually discovers that the apparent frame-up may actually have been designed to put Jason himself on trial.

Read the four books in publication order. The individual cases are distinct, but Jason’s grief, career, relationships, and increasing vulnerability carry across the sequence.

The Hidden Man begins with a murder everyone understands emotionally

Sammy Cutler lost his younger sister Audrey when they were children. Police believed Griffin Perlini abducted and killed her but never had enough evidence to convict him.

Twenty-six years later Perlini is murdered, and Sammy is accused. Jason is not simply representing an old friend. To defend Sammy effectively, he has to revisit the disappearance that shaped both of their childhoods and examine whether the man Sammy allegedly killed really was Audrey’s murderer.

Breach of Trust connects personal guilt with political corruption

Jason believes one missed phone call contributed to two tragedies. He was waiting for confidential informant Ernesto Ramirez to contact him on the same night Jason’s wife and infant daughter died.

When he starts investigating Ernesto’s murder, Jason collides with a federal corruption case involving state officials. The FBI pressures him into undercover work, turning his search for one killer into a dangerous attempt to expose corruption near the highest level of state government.

The Wrong Man gives Jason a client who cannot explain his own movements

Tom Stoller suffers from post-traumatic stress after serving in Iraq. He is homeless, mentally unstable, and found with evidence that makes the murder case against him look straightforward.

Jason initially expects to rely on a mental-health defense. His strategy changes when the evidence begins suggesting that Tom may actually be innocent and that the murdered paralegal had been following money connected with a much larger threat.

The Last Alibi turns attorney-client privilege into a trap

James Drinker enters Jason’s office before police have accused him of anything. He claims two murdered women were connected to him and fears he will soon become the obvious suspect.

More women die. Jason begins questioning Drinker’s story, but the lawyer cannot simply expose everything a client tells him. The case becomes especially dangerous when evidence starts making Jason, not Drinker, look like the person responsible for the murders.

Ellis wrote five major standalones before Jason Kolarich

1. Line of Vision (2001): Marty Kalish is having an affair with married Rachel Reinmann when her husband disappears, and Marty’s own first-person account leaves readers uncertain whether the accused man is revealing the truth or carefully controlling what they are allowed to see.
2. Life Sentence (2003): Political lawyer Jon Soliday is accused of murder just as an old death from his teenage years threatens the gubernatorial ambitions of his closest friend, forcing him to question his own incomplete memory of what happened in 1979.
3. Jury of One (2004): Children’s-rights lawyer Shelly Trotter defends a seventeen-year-old accused of killing a police officer and discovers that the teenager may be the son she gave up for adoption years earlier.
4. In the Company of Liars (2005): Murder defendant Allison Pagone becomes trapped between family loyalty, the FBI, political corruption, pharmaceutical interests, and terrorism in a novel told completely backward from apparent ending to beginning.
5. Eye of the Beholder (2007): Attorney Paul Riley once prosecuted serial killer Terry Burgos for the murders of six women, but a new series of killings sixteen years later forces Riley to ask whether the original case was as complete as everyone believed.

These books do not share protagonists. Read them in any order, although publication order shows how Ellis experimented increasingly with unreliable perspectives, reverse chronology, courtroom structure, and old crimes returning to threaten the present.

Line of Vision won Ellis the Edgar for a reason

The novel’s central trick is not merely whether Marty Kalish killed Rachel’s husband. It is whether a first-person narrator can tell the reader everything he chooses to reveal while still withholding the truth.

Marty admits enough damaging facts to make himself look guilty of something, including the affair and his presence outside the house. The courtroom therefore becomes a test of both legal evidence and the reader’s willingness to trust the person narrating the story.

Life Sentence uses friendship as the dangerous evidence

Jon Soliday and politician Grant Tully have been close since high school. They also share a history involving the death of a teenage girl after a party in 1979.

When Jon is accused of a new murder and receives blackmail threats about the old case, protecting his friend may require him to hide exactly the information that could help save himself.

Jury of One makes the client’s identity more important than the verdict

Shelly Trotter begins with little adult criminal-trial experience. Her seventeen-year-old client is accused of killing a police officer during a case involving corrupt cops.

The defense changes emotionally when the boy claims to be Shelly’s biological son. Her father had kept the adoption quiet because of political ambitions, so the murder trial threatens both a family secret and a powerful public career.

In the Company of Liars literally moves backward

The novel opens with consequences that would normally appear near the end of a thriller. Each succeeding section then moves earlier in time.

That structure changes the mystery question. Instead of asking what will happen next, the reader repeatedly asks what happened before to create something already witnessed.

Allison Pagone’s murder trial, family relationships, political bribery, pharmaceutical corruption, and terrorism become clearer only as the narrative strips away assumptions in reverse.

Eye of the Beholder makes Paul Riley reopen his own greatest success

As a young prosecutor, Paul helped convict Terry Burgos for six grotesque murders. The case made Paul’s reputation.

Sixteen years later new killings imitate details from the Burgos murders. If someone else understood those crimes closely enough to reproduce them, Paul has to reconsider whether his celebrated prosecution revealed the whole truth.

Look Closer begins Ellis’s newer run of twist-heavy solo thrillers

1. Look Closer (2022): Chicago law professor Simon Dobias and his wife Vicky appear to have a stable marriage, but an affair, a twenty-million-dollar trust fund, old grudges, and multiple hidden schemes make it difficult to determine who is deceiving whom.
2. The Best Lies (2024): Pathological liar and crusading attorney Leo Balanoff is found connected to a murdered drug dealer and accepts an FBI undercover deal rather than face prison, placing him against both a criminal syndicate and former lover Andi Piotrowski.
3. Keep Them Close (2026): Siblings Allison and Luke have always protected one another, but the murder of Allison’s husband Finley threatens to expose family secrets that make loyalty much more dangerous than it first appears.

These three are independent stories. They share Ellis’s modern interest in deception and shifting viewpoints but do not form a series.

Look Closer is a marriage where both people understand manipulation

Simon and Vicky are not presented as one innocent spouse and one secretive villain. Both understand deception, both have private agendas, and both may be planning around the other.

The murder plot becomes a contest over who knows what, who anticipated whom, and which apparent betrayal is actually part of a deeper plan.

The Best Lies gives its hero one major problem: nobody believes him

Leo Balanoff is a lawyer who fights aggressively for causes he believes are right. He is also a diagnosed pathological liar.

When his fingerprints appear on the weapon used to kill a major drug dealer, even the people who know him have little reason to trust his explanation. The FBI offers him a chance to work undercover against the dead man’s syndicate, creating a situation where lying is simultaneously Leo’s greatest talent and the reason no one believes he is in danger.

Keep Them Close makes sibling loyalty the central deception

Allison and Luke have survived difficult experiences together and present themselves as siblings who will always protect one another.

Finley’s murder places that loyalty under investigation. As detectives begin examining the family, secrets that once helped Allison and Luke survive threaten to make each sibling suspicious of what the other may have done.

Keep Them Close was released on June 30, 2026 and is Ellis’s newest solo novel as of this update.

Ellis and James Patterson created two separate recurring series

The collaborations should not be treated as extensions of Jason Kolarich. They introduce different protagonists and can be read independently from Ellis’s solo legal novels.

Emmy Dockery books in order

1. Invisible (2014, with James Patterson): FBI researcher Emmy Dockery becomes convinced that hundreds of supposedly unrelated deaths and crimes are the work of one killer, but even her former fiancé, agent Harrison “Books” Bookman, initially believes her theory is impossible.
2. Unsolved (2019, with James Patterson): Emmy and Books investigate a new pattern of deaths that appear accidental, while evidence makes even members of the FBI look suspicious and the killer studies Emmy as carefully as she studies the crimes.

Read Invisible first. Unsolved assumes familiarity with Emmy, Books, their relationship, and Emmy’s unusual ability to identify patterns other investigators dismiss.

Invisible is about noticing a serial killer before anyone knows there is one

Emmy is not trying to identify the perpetrator of one recognized murder series. She is trying to prove that a murder series exists at all.

The deaths appear to have different causes, locations, victims, and circumstances. Her skill is finding small similarities in records that suggest one person may be constructing crimes specifically to prevent investigators from realizing they are connected.

Billy Harney books move deeper into Chicago corruption

1. The Black Book (2017, with James Patterson): Chicago detective Billy Harney investigates murders connected with an exclusive brothel while the disappearance of its client ledger threatens judges, politicians, police officers, and some of the city’s most powerful people.
2. The Red Book (2021, with James Patterson): A drive-by shooting appears to offer police a quick solution, but Billy discovers that the victims are connected to a deeper political and criminal conspiracy that may again reach inside law enforcement.
3. Escape (2022, with James Patterson): Six inmates break out of a Chicago jail, two correctional officers are killed, and evidence left specifically for Billy makes the escape part of a personal contest with someone who knows exactly how he investigates.

These three form the principal Billy Harney trilogy released through 2022. Read them consecutively because Billy’s family, reputation, history inside the Chicago Police Department, and earlier corruption cases continue across the books.

The Black Book revolves around the one piece of evidence everyone wants

A brothel serving wealthy clients becomes the center of a murder investigation. The most explosive evidence is not a body or weapon but a missing client ledger.

Whoever possesses the black book can potentially expose powerful people across Chicago. That makes recovering it dangerous because investigators cannot know whether the person assisting them is protecting justice, a career, a marriage, or a criminal relationship.

The Red Book returns Billy to a past he hoped to leave alone

After surviving the events of the first book, Billy already has a complicated reputation inside the department.

The new shooting initially appears easier to solve, but Billy’s instincts tell him the obvious explanation is incomplete. Following those doubts means entering political territory where asking the correct question can be more dangerous than accepting the wrong answer.

Escape begins with someone leaving a message just for Billy

The jailbreak is already serious: six prisoners have escaped and correctional officers are dead.

Then Billy finds abandoned tactical equipment and a handwritten note addressing him by name. The escape has not merely happened within his jurisdiction. Someone has designed part of it as a direct challenge to him.

Other Patterson and Ellis collaborations belong outside those two series

1. Guilty Wives (2012, with James Patterson): Four married women take a luxury trip to Monte Carlo and are accused of a shocking crime, leaving them trapped inside a legal system where powerful interests seem determined to ensure conviction.
2. Mistress (2013, with James Patterson): Obsessive journalist Ben investigates the death of Diana Hotchkiss and discovers that the woman he loved from a distance was living a secret double life connected with dangerous people.
3. The Murder House (2015, with James Patterson): Detective Jenna Murphy investigates killings at a notorious Hamptons mansion known as Number 7 Ocean Drive and discovers that the house’s violent history reaches into her own past.

These collaborations are standalones. They do not belong in the Emmy Dockery or Billy Harney numbering.

David Ellis solo novels in practical publication order

1. Line of Vision (2001): Marty Kalish may know more about a murder than his first-person account admits.
2. Life Sentence (2003): Jon Soliday faces a new murder charge and an old political secret.
3. Jury of One (2004): Shelly Trotter defends a teenager who may be the son she gave up for adoption.
4. In the Company of Liars (2005): Allison Pagone’s story unfolds in reverse chronological order.
5. Eye of the Beholder (2007): Paul Riley confronts murders resembling the serial-killer case that made his reputation.
6. The Hidden Man (2009): Jason Kolarich defends his childhood friend in a revenge murder.
7. Breach of Trust (2011): Jason goes undercover inside a corruption investigation.
8. The Wrong Man (2012): Jason defends an Iraq veteran who may have been framed.
9. The Last Alibi (2013): Jason’s own client may be constructing a murder case against him.
10. Look Closer (2022): Simon and Vicky Dobias turn marriage, money, and deception into a battle of competing schemes.
11. The Best Lies (2024): Pathological liar Leo Balanoff goes undercover against a criminal syndicate.
12. Keep Them Close (2026): Allison and Luke’s sibling loyalty is tested after Allison’s husband is murdered.

Why Ellis can move between courtroom and domestic suspense so easily

Ellis served as a lawyer before becoming a justice on the Illinois Appellate Court. His early novels lean heavily on legal strategy, evidence, criminal procedure, politics, and courtroom reversals.

His later solo thrillers place less emphasis on formal trials but preserve the same interest in unreliable testimony. Instead of asking whether a witness is lying under oath, books such as Look Closer and The Best Lies ask whether the reader has been manipulated by the characters themselves.

The current David Ellis endpoint is Keep Them Close

As of September 10, 2026, Keep Them Close is Ellis’s latest published solo novel. It was released on June 30, 2026.

The Jason Kolarich series remains at four novels, while the principal Patterson collaborations include two Emmy Dockery books, three Billy Harney books, and several standalones.

Questions that sort Ellis’s legal and collaborative books

What David Ellis book should I read first?

Start with Line of Vision for his solo career, The Hidden Man for Jason Kolarich, or Look Closer for his newer psychological-thriller style.

How many Jason Kolarich novels are there?

There are four: The Hidden Man, Breach of Trust, The Wrong Man, and The Last Alibi.

Do Jason Kolarich books need to be read in order?

Yes. Each legal case is distinct, but Jason’s personal losses, relationships, and professional history develop continuously.

Is Look Closer a Jason Kolarich book?

No. It is a standalone domestic thriller centered on Simon and Vicky Dobias.

Does In the Company of Liars really run backward?

Yes. The novel begins with events near the end of the chronology and moves backward chapter by chapter toward the true beginning.

How many Emmy Dockery books are there?

There are two Patterson and Ellis collaborations in that sequence: Invisible and Unsolved.

What order should I read Billy Harney?

Read The Black Book, The Red Book, then Escape.

What is David Ellis’s latest book?

Keep Them Close, released June 30, 2026, is his latest solo novel as of this update.

The Ellis bookshelf that keeps every deception in the right place

Keep Jason Kolarich together from The Hidden Man through The Last Alibi. Place Ellis’s earlier five legal and psychological thrillers before that as independent novels, then shelve Look Closer, The Best Lies, and Keep Them Close as modern standalones.

For the James Patterson collaborations, keep Invisible with Unsolved and keep the Billy Harney trilogy together from The Black Book through Escape. The remaining collaborations are independent.

That approach preserves Ellis’s real continuities without turning every Chicago lawyer, FBI investigator, police detective, and unreliable spouse into one fictional universe.