Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh

The Devil’s Advocate (Orion, 2021) is the sixth book about defense attorney Eddie Flynn. Created by Irish lawyer Steve Cavanagh, Flynn is a former grifter who learned the trade from his father. He abandoned a lucrative life running scams to attend law school and lead a socially acceptable life. A hair-raising encounter with the Russian mafia, related in The Defense (Flatiron Books, 2016), forced him to resurrect his swindler’s tricks and to call on his not altogether honest friends and they have been part of his legal arsenal ever since.

Flynn needs all the help he can get when Alexander Berlin, a high-level U.S. government troubleshooter, approaches him about representing a young man on trial for murder in Sunville County, Alabama. The district attorney there, Randall Korn, is known for requesting the death penalty whenever he can and getting it. His death row statistics are completely out of line with the rural county’s population and are among the highest in the nation. This discrepancy has been noted by the Justice Department and others but so far Korn has skillfully covered his tracks and no overt reason for challenging him presents itself. Berlin hired a lawyer to represent Korn’s latest target and he has disappeared. Berlin thinks he’s been killed and he wants Flynn to take his place, believing Flynn can outwit the underhanded local machinery in Buckstown.

Flynn has an uphill battle. The local hotels won’t rent a room to him and his sidekick retired New York justice Harry Ford, the restaurants won’t serve them. His vehicle tires are slashed, critical evidence that supports the defense is missing, the county sheriff refuses to allow him to see his client. When Flynn does manage to talk to him by getting arrested himself, he learns the sheriff has threatened to hurt the young man’s mother if he talks to Flynn. Civil rights violations abound and Flynn and Ford are in imminent danger. Flynn quite reasonably fears his client may be killed in his cell in a faked suicide.

I tore through this compulsively readable book in about six hours, staying up well into the night. Darker than many legal thrillers, this story has strong overtones of To Kill a Mockingbird but the people here are frighteningly malevolent instead of ignorant. Cavanagh works small town character and U. S. contemporary race issues into a scary and heart-pounding legal thriller that demonstrates clearly just how deeply the justice system can be compromised. Finalist 2022 Steel Dagger Award.

·         Hardcover: 403 pages

·         Publisher: Orion Books, 2021

·         Language: ‎English

·         ISBN-10: ‎1398700177

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1398700178

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.