The Best Lies by David Ellis

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on July 23, 2024

Leo Balanoff has a younger brother named Trace. They were raised by a mother who purchased them after she inadvertently killed her own children. She was a decent if overprotective mother to her stolen children, although Leo eventually came to doubt her claim that they needed to keep moving because someone was trying to kill them.

Leo’s college life had a little hiccup when he apparently committed a felony assault by punching a cop. The circumstances surrounding the hiccup are revealed as the story unfolds.

In college, Leo became involved with Andi Piotrowski, who planned to become a cop so she could take down human traffickers like the one who sold Trace and Leo. They’ve been apart for five years, but Leo is disappointed to learn that she quit her law enforcement job and is providing private security for a medical research business.

Leo is now a lawyer, although his license was suspended for five years because he induced a guilty man’s confession to save his innocent client by pretending to be an FBI agent. One of the quirks of our criminal justice system is that FBI agents can pretend to be anyone without consequence but pretending to be an FBI agent is a crime. In an effort to save his license, Leo’s law firm arranged for a mental health evaluation that proclaimed Leo to be a pathological liar. Why they thought that would help is beyond me.

As the novel begins, Leo is facing a trial for murdering Cyrus Balik. The evidence against Leo seems solid: his fingerprints on the murder weapon, his blood on the victim’s sleeve. The reader will wonder how Leo is going to get out of this mess.

Most of the novel tells Leo’s backstory. Leo was representing Bonnie Tessler as a cooperating witness against Cyrus. A few weeks after Leo and Bonnie have confidential meetings with the FBI and local law enforcement authorities, Bonnie dies from a drug overdose. Leo believes Bonnie was murdered. He views Cyrus as the logical suspect but wonders how Cyrus learned that Bonnie was cooperating against him.

Leo has more than one reason to regard Cyrus as worthy of vengeance. Leo’s connections to Bonnie and Cyrus are revealed as the story unfolds.

Shortly after Cyrus dies, Leo is drawn into a criminal plot orchestrated by Nico Katsaros. Leo’s connections to Nico are revealed as the story unfolds.

The crime involves industrial espionage for China’s secret police. Chris Roberti is an FBI agent who earns extra income by helping a spy for China. Chris introduces the spy to Nico. Andi has access to plans for technology that the Chinese government would love to acquire. By threatening to expose evidence that Leo committed a murder, Nico induces Leo to act as a courier, ferrying the plans from Andi to the Chinese spy. The criminal plot doesn’t go as planned, in part because Leo’s adversaries underestimate his intelligence.

David Ellis constructed the story brick by brick, each new row adding facts that illuminate or belie facts that form the novel’s foundation. By the novel’s last act, several characters have a motive to murder Leo. Other characters are not who they seem to be. Mistaken identity subplots abound. Good guys cannot easily be distinguished from bad guys.

David Ellis invites the reader to reevaluate the story and its characters after each plot development. My only complaint is that Ellis continues to lay long rows of bricks late in the story, after key plot points are resolved, extending the book by a significant length when abbreviated scenes would have hastened the story to its conclusion. I nevertheless appreciated the plot structure, the strong storytelling, and the intriguing characters.

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