Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh

The 8^th book in the very fine Eddie Flynn legal thriller series by civil rights lawyer Steve Cavanagh is finally available. Released in the UK in August 2024, it won’t be sold in the US until March 2025. Fortunately bookstores in the UK will ship to the US, for a price of course, and I did not have to wait until next year to read it. Cavanagh lives in northern Ireland but he sets his books in New York.

Margaret Blakemore was shot in her home in an upscale New York City neighborhood one night. An anonymous phone call to the police said that the killer was John Jackson, relative newcomer to the street. Jackson was home alone, with his family out of town. A search of the Jackson house turned up the murder weapon, which Jackson said he didn’t own and had never seen before. The prints on it were not his, yet the DNA found on it was.

Jackson is a pediatric surgeon at New York University Hospital and has the money to hire the best law firm in the city. They in turn retained Eddie Flynn because of his record of success in capital murder cases. Flynn’s investigators set out to learn everything possible about the victim and the evidence to find something the police had overlooked. Jackson is reeling from the accusation. He and his family recently moved to the street and know few people as yet. There is no obvious connection between them and Blakemore.

In a parallel story line the anonymous caller is revealed to be Ruby Johnson, the Jackson’s part-time child care provider who worked at several houses in the wealthy neighborhood where maids and au pairs and nannies were routine. While Ruby’s outward demeanor radiated helpfulness, inwardly she was doing everything she could to set Jackson up as the culprit. The overriding question of course is why? She barely knew the Jacksons, had not worked for them long, and could not possibly have cause to wreck their lives. Yet wrecking them she is. The hospital suspends Jackson, who lived for his work with desperately ill children, and then the neighbors begin to pressure the family to leave. The Jacksons are falling apart under the stress and Flynn has no choice but to expedite the trial when he would rather have delayed it.

I wished that the two main characters had more dissimilar names. John Jackson and Ruby Johnson are just too much alike. Otherwise this is another impressive entry in the series. Cavanagh throws one curve ball after another, in the courtroom and out. The explanation for how Jackson’s DNA came to be on the murder weapon is especially slick. In the end, who actually killed Margaret Blakemore and why becomes far less significant than why Ruby Johnson was targeting the Jacksons. When the answer comes, as usual with Cavanagh, it is startling. For fans of legal thrillers and strong mysteries in general. Recommended.

 

 

·       Publisher: ‎Headline (1 Aug. 2024)

·       Language: ‎English

·       Hardcover: ‎400 pages

·       ISBN-10: ‎1035408201

·       ISBN-13: ‎978-1035408207

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3YFX2ps

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2024

 

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