Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Beholder is the David Ellis novel that won the Edgar Award and deserves the late-2000s reputation it never quite picked up. Paul Riley is a successful Chicago defense attorney who, fifteen years earlier as a young prosecutor, won the conviction of his own childhood friend Terry Burgos for a series of brutal murders. Burgos is now scheduled for execution. A new series of murders, with the same particular signature, has just begun.

What Ellis does with the premise is the right thing. The book is not really a whodunit. It is about whether Paul has been carrying the wrong story for fifteen years, and what kind of moral debt he has accumulated by carrying it. The legal-procedural texture is excellent (Ellis is a working appellate lawyer who served as House impeachment counsel) and the closing chapters earn their weight.

The book is dense and the multi-decade structure is ambitious. The payoffs are precise.

Five stars. One of the most underread psychological thrillers of its decade. Recommended without reservation to readers of the form.