Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Two Kinds of Stranger: A Novel (Eddie Flynn Series) by Steve Cavanagh

 

While I read the latest Eddie Flynn last year, courtesy of Waterstones and Royal Mail, when it was published in the UK, I acquired a US edition a couple of weeks ago when Steve Cavanagh stopped at a nearby bookstore on his tour to promote Two Kinds of Stranger after its US release in March. So now I have two signed copies!

Of course I had to re-read it. It’s an enthralling story of Elly Parker, a naïve but generous young woman who has quite a following on TikTok, posting videos that urge her followers to perform an act of kindness every day. She has recently married the man of her dreams and her posts overflow with happiness until a few weeks after the wedding she walks into her apartment while filming and finds her new husband and her best friend in bed. The post went viral and millions of people watched Elly’s perfect life shatter.

One of the viewers was a psychopath who decided to set Elly up for the murder of her husband and best friend. He enjoys killing people and he considers the possibilities of the situation too good to pass up. His plans don’t quite go as expected but Elly did get arrested. She had enough presence of mind to call Eddie Flynn, who by now is well known as the defense lawyer for dire cases.

The POV moves between Eddie trying to find a viable defense strategy and the killer trying to stay one step ahead. In a parallel thread Kevin, married to Eddie’s ex-wife, has run into trouble with a young man who courts wealthy elderly women that make wills in his favor and then die soon after. One of Kevin’s clients was a victim but Kevin had the will overturned and is now being threatened in retaliation. Eddie’s daughter asks him to step in, as Kevin is not at all equipped to deal with thugs.

Eddy’s attention is split between defending Elly and protecting his family. Fortunately Eddie’s team has grown since his first book. He now has astute Kate Brooks in partnership, his long-time friend Harry Ford the retired judge, two skilled investigators in Bloch and Lake, and Denise the secretary who holds the office together. Harry has become one of my favorite fictional sidekicks.

The psychopath here is quite possibly the most ingeniously evil character to grace the pages of crime fiction. (Steve Cavanagh seems so nice, how does he think of people like this?) The killer’s thoroughness in establishing Elly’s guilt is jaw-dropping, but Eddy’s expertise in countering him is no less. The final twist in the book though is downright brilliant, a deliciously appropriate form of retribution. Part legal thriller, part psychological thriller, and a thoroughly good read. Recommended!

Starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.

For the record, this is the only piece of crime fiction I’ve read that involves that scourge of gardeners and farmers, the Japanese lantern fly.

I am looking forward to Eddy’s next case which will be published in the UK in August.

·         Publisher: ‎Atria Books

·         Publication date: ‎March 24, 2026

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎400 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1668093391

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1668093399

 

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4tWY5Oa

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026

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

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.

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.

SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: The CWA 2022 Dagger Long Lists

SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: The CWA 2022 Dagger Long Lists: The CWA Dagger Long lists have been announced this evening at the CWA Gala Dinner which took place during the annual CWA Conference. The Dag...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Defense by Steve Cavanagh

Steve Cavanagh’s fourth book about Eddie Flynn won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in July 2019 amidst formidable competition, which says just how good a read it is. Since I hadn’t encountered Eddie previously, I started at the beginning with The Defense (Flatiron Books, 2016) and found it an excellent legal thriller as well as a witty story of a resourceful con man trying to go straight and giving up when a law-abiding life couldn’t protect his family.

Eddie 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 an average life. After a defense case gone horribly off the rails, he sold his share of his law practice and hit the sauce far too hard, losing his wife and daughter in the process. One morning awhile after Eddie began his slow climb back to sobriety, a member of the Russian mafia kidnaps him for a meeting with his chief, who is out on bail before his trial for homicide. The mafia chief Volchek explains to Eddie that he is holding Eddie’s daughter hostage until Eddie gets Volchek acquitted by killing the main witness against him.

In a desperate bid to save his daughter and stay out of jail himself, Eddie resurrects all of his rusty swindler’s tricks to outsmart the Russian gangsters as well as uses his considerable legal expertise to tap dance his way through a murder trial he’s had no time to prepare for. When it becomes clear the Russians have members of law enforcement on their payroll and no assistance can be expected from that quarter, Eddie has no choice but to call on the people he knew in his other life for help. They include his childhood friend who is now the leader of an Italian crime family, with his own agenda where the Russians are concerned.

An original and gripping plot with a host of first-rate characters. The suspense is expertly developed, resulting in some harrowing scenes, for instance, where Eddie scales the front of the old and crumbling courthouse building. Eddie Flynn is an exceptionally fine addition to the ranks of fictional lawyers, and I am pleased to make his acquaintance. 

Shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Thriller of the Year.

Publishers Weekly starred review

·         Hardcover: 320 pages

·         Publisher: Flatiron Books; 1st edition (May 3, 2016)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1250082250

·         ISBN-13: 978-1250082251

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

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