Breach of Trust

I don’t know about you guys (and I don’t want to offend any attorneys that might read these comments), but when it comes to legal thrillers, I sometimes find myself having to search hard for the “good guys” in the story.  There is just so much grey area and cliquish favoritism in the legal world that every attorney seems to get splattered with mud at some point in these stories.  Even the hero of this new David Ellis novel, Breach of Trust, strong an advocate for doing the right thing as he is, does not come across as being lily white clean.  But he might be as close as it comes.

Jason Kolarich (pronounced Cola Rich, as he so often points out to those he dislikes) is beating himself up because of the accident that claimed the lives of his wife and new daughter.  He blames himself for not being with them the night they died in a winter automobile accident.  Jason, after hitting rock bottom emotionally, knows that he can do nothing to bring his wife and daughter back – but, when he gets an unexpected opportunity to learn what really happened on the night they died, he is willing to do whatever it takes to get those answers.

Jason Kolarich is a man with nothing left to lose.  As such, he errs on the side of impetuousness to such a degree that soon the only way he can keep himself out of prison is by becoming an FBI informer.  Even then, unless things break exactly right for him, Kolarich could easily find himself sharing a jail cell with one of the same people whose conversations he has agreed to record for the government.

Author David Ellis

Breach of Trust is very much a legal thriller, with heavy emphasis on the word thriller.  Jason Kolarich infiltrates the organization of a corrupt state Governor, an organization populated by powerful, and paranoid, individuals that worry about Jason’s loyalty to the governor.  He is a newcomer and that alone makes him a potential threat to some people who would gladly have him killed if he is once caught wearing a recording device. 

Interestingly, author David Ellis is somewhat of an expert on “breach of trust” in state government; he was, after all, the Impeachment Prosecutor in the trial of the disgraced Rod Blagojevich.   So Ellis knows of what he writes in Breach of Trust, and here he shares much of that hard-gained knowledge with the rest of us. 

Fans of the genre are sure to enjoy this one.

Rated at: 4.0