Mystery man: Illinois' David Ellis is a rare combination of legislative attorney and literary lion.

• Author: Knowles, Carol
• Position: LEGISLATIVE STAFF PROFILE - Cover story

A government lawyer by day, a mystery writer by night

Like the characters in his legal thrillers, David Ellis is a richly textured personality, and just when you think you have him figured out, he surprises you.

At 44, Ellis is at the top of his game. Since November 2006, he has served as chief counsel to Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. Soft-spoken and mannerly, he was the lead prosecutor in the historic impeachment proceedings against former Governor Rod Blagojevich. Ellis also is credited as a key player in crafting ethical reforms that Illinois lawmakers hope will prevent a repeat of the Blagojevich scandal.

Somehow, Ellis also has found the time to write seven page-turning novels and pick up some literary awards along the way. Two more books are coming out this year.

But nothing, he says, really prepared him for his role in the decline and fall of Illinois' governor.

"I opened a door and walked into Beirut--that's what it felt like," Ellis says. "It was a very difficult couple of years. I felt like my feet never touched the ground."

A Drive to Write

Ellis had a typical suburban upbringing in Downers Grove, Ill., just west of Chicago. His parents, he says, are his heroes and have been the most influential people in his life.

"I have a great mixture of my mother and my father in me," Ellis says. "My creative, artistic side comes from my mother, who is a little bit more of a free spirit. I have my father's analytical approach to problems. His calm in the face of chaos. His sense of humor.

"In unconscious ways, you find yourself acting exactly like the people who brought you up. You don't really know how it happened, you just know it did."

Ellis knew from an early age that he wanted to write, penning two mysteries and a play in grade school. The stories, Ellis says, were reminiscent of the fictional teen detectives, the Hardy Boys.

"I don't know why I became a writer, but I was a writer before I was anything else. I was a writer before I was a lawyer. I was a writer before I was an athlete in high school. It was the first thing I did. It was the first thing I was drawn to."

A product of Downers Grove North High School, he studied finance at the University of Illinois Champaign and earned his law degree at Northwestern University School of Law in downtown Chicago.

After graduating in 1993, Ellis spent time in private practice in Chicago, but civil litigation bored him. He was looking for a new challenge when a friend called and asked him to join him in Springfield, working for state government.

"The pay will be terrible and the hours will be long, but it will be interesting,' "Ellis recalls his friend saying. "I got to a point [in private practice] where I felt like I was just pushing paper and not really making a difference in anybody's life, so I wanted to try something different."

Ellis, an expert in constitutional and election law, spent two years as assistant counsel to the speaker before returning to Chicago to join some friends in his own firm. The change allowed him more time to write.

The path to publication was not easy. He was rejected 75 times before finding an agent, and estimates he went through eight drafts and three years of his life

on his first novel. But his persistence paid off. "Line of Vision" won the prestigious Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best first novel by an American author in 2002.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

His following novels--"Life Sentence," 2003, "Jury of One,"...