Book title: The Defence
Author’s name: Steve Cavanagh
Published by: Orion Books
Publication year: 2015
Taking his reader all through suspenseful moments of Russian Mafia kidnapping and a forty-eight hours countdown to get a crime case acquitted got Eddie Flynn thinking outside the box. Eddie Flynn a formal con artist, who later became a lawyer, but it turned out the two weren’t that different as they both complement each other in the courtroom.
It’s been over a year since Eddie vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again after his six months suspension, but now he doesn’t have a choice but to represent a mobster who held his ten year old daughter hostage. Olek Volchek, the infamous head of the Russian mafia in New York, has strapped a bomb to Eddie’s back and kidnapped his ten-year-old
daughter Amy. Eddie only has 48 hours to defend Volchek in an impossible murder trial and win if wants to save his daughter.
Under the scrutiny of the media and the FBI, Eddie must use his razor-sharp wit and
every con-artist trick in the book to defend his ‘client’ and ensure Amy’s safety. And With the timer on his back ticking away, Eddie was given the option of either convincing the jury of his client’s innocence or losing his ten year old daughter Amy.
Steve got the chapters under close supervision, bringing the storyline delivery for the understanding of everyone even the lay man. The succinct use of various law terminologies, such as is obtainable in the courtroom today drove home the point and would explain better what each move in the courtroom mean other than just using the conventional or the ambiguous English phrases.
This novel being a crime thriller, connotes serious work and then you’ve got it with Steve’s delivery of an almost ninety percent in-depth narration into Russian mafia illegal moves. You know, initially I’d thought I was reading a non-fictional biography of someone, not until I came back to myself.
Steve’s narrative technique was quite compelling with his delivery in the first person point of view. This helps encapsulate the mind of the reader into the heart of the story, hereby making them more immersed in it. The fact that Steve mostly represented his protagonist with the pronoun I, also made his readers to live in the story-line progression as well.
Though Steve made some chapters shorter than is traditionally expected in a Crime thriller, hereby expanding the chapters to extend to seventy two pages (guess he’s kind of managing his space, Lol…) Well, it wouldn’t make much meaning to any good reader who had enjoyed the suspenseful delivery of the various characterization in this piece and most especially the final turn of event for Eddie Flynn who triumphed at the end over his arch- enemy Arturas.
The defence was thoughtfully thought out by a good author who lived in the mind of a con artist, lawyer and at the same time mafia. A good book for everyone.
Nifty Review 