IS THIS THE BEST THRILLER OF 2009?

[THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, RUTH]

THE HIDDEN MAN, by David Ellis (Putnam; $25.95)

If you've just been the prosecutor who hung Rod Blagojevich out to dry, what do you do for an encore? If you're David Ellis, you write your best legal thriller yet – creating a new series hero who should be around for a long time.

Jason Kolarich, a Chicago criminal defense lawyer easing the pain of a personal tragedy by taking on no-brainer cases and drinking himself into a stupor most nights, has come down in the world. A college football star, he was smart enough to land a good job with one of Chicago's most prestigious firms after serving as a county prosecutor. Fame and fortune shined down after he second-chaired the defense of a sitting state senator charged by the Feds with extortion and taking bribes, and helped get him off.

Then came his tragedy, which tore him apart. “I'd been back on my feet for six months, and I'd gotten some good results for some clients,” he tells us. Kolarich's nightmare – which so quickly and naturally becomes the reader's that you'll be amazed and frightened in equal measures – begins when a man calling himself Smith (“From the moment my assistant Marie showed him in, he felt wrong... His hand was moist when I shook it, and he didn't make eye contact”) offers him a very large retainer to defend Sammy Cutler, Jason's closest boyhood friend, whom he hasn't seen in 20 years – on a murder charge. Cutler's baby sister, Audrey, was stolen from her bed when Sammy was seven. Now, he has been accused of killing the sexual predator who everybody believes was the child's abductor, and wants his old friend Jason to get him off. The case “would require dedication, consistency, and full work days,” Kolarich says – knowing that the price of screwing it up would be his old friend spending his life in jail.

It gets even more harrowing when Jason begins to get threats of violence from Smith and his employer, known only as “Carlo” – chiefly against his younger brother, Pete, the only surviving member of the Kolarich clan whom Jason loves. When Pete is charged with selling guns and a large amount of cocaine, he insists to his brother that he was set up.

Kolarich believes him, but now has to work his mind and body through some dangerous moments. Again, Ellis lays it all out in cool, understated pages that grab you by the throat. And the ending will knock your socks off.

Did I mention that he also writes about trials and all things legal with the same expertise he's been guilty of for six books?