50-50 by Steve Cavanagh

 

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Outline...

Two sisters on trial for murder. Both accuse each other.
Who do you believe?

Alexandra Avellino has just found her father’s mutilated body, and needs the police right away. She believes her sister killed him, and that she is still in the house with a knife.

Sofia Avellino has just found her father’s mutilated body and needs the police right away. She believes her sister, Alexandra did it, and that she is still in the house, locked in the bathroom.

Both women are to go on trial at the same time. A joint trial in front of one jury.

But one of these women is lying. One of them is a murderer. Sitting in a jail cell, about to go on trial with her sister for murder, you might think that this is the last place she expected to be.....
You'd be wrong. 

My Review....
I had seen Steve Cavanagh on a few youtube things with other crime writers like Mark Billingham, Luca Veste and Val McDirmed. He seemed a very entertaining and clever guy so I thought I would read one of his books and it did not dissapoint.

Cavanagh is an ex lawyer so knows his stuff. The setting is the law courts of New York and you would think that the author is a native of New York but surprisingly he is a Northern Irishman with a thick accent to boot.

I think this is the 5th or 6th in the series but I had not read any of the previous Eddie Flyn novels. A situation I hope to rectify throught out the course of the year.

This is a book of multiples. We have two potential killers and two protagonists. Eddie Flynn and Kate Brooks.

Our hero Eddie is an experienced street fighter of a lawyer who was once a conman, so has plenty of transferable skills as well as friends in low places. As a lawyer he will not fight for an innocent verdict of someone he believes to be guilty.

Kate is a junior lawyer representing one of the sisters. She eventually ends up blossoming as a lawyer and unfurling her wings. She too believes her client innocent.

The book is a plotters dream with more suspense than Hitchcock's braces. The chapters are seen through several characters point of view but only two are in the first person. One is Eddie the other is "She" the killer sister, whose identity is not revealed. With all these well written viewpoints we get a slick, fast paced tale.

Eventually the good hearted lawyers (I know eh!) begin to suspect malice aforethought by at least one if not both of the sisters. 

The only negative for me is the fact that I'll never listen to "She" by Elvis Costello again 😳🗡❤

As the investigation continues loose ends must be tidied up and the body count begins to rise.
Well plotted, great characters. Cavanagh writes like a young Grisham. 

Selected Quotes
"A murder trial with an innocent client is like saving someone who’s fallen over a cliff edge. You’ve got their hand. You’ve got to hang on. You’ve got to haul them to safety. Their life is in your grasp. Your strength is all that separates them from a chasm."

"Moonlight seemed beautiful to her. It was the devil’s neon."

"Whoever tells the best story wins."

"Verdicts are often flawed because people are flawed."

"The Magnum held five rounds in its cylinder. Each round looked the same size as a cigarette lighter and cost two and a half bucks. No matter what kind of problem you had, as long as you were carrying that gun, two dollars fifty was probably all you needed to spend in order to solve it."

About the author...

Steve Cavanagh is an Irish author from Belfast and at the age eighteen he studied law by mistake. He is now the international award-winning author of the Eddie Flynn novels. His debut novel, The Defense, was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Thriller of the Year, and The Plea won the Prix Polar Award for Best International Novel. Steve is still a practicing lawyer (someday he’ll get the hang of it) and co-host ofthe chart-topping podcast Two Crime Writers And A Microphone. He has been involved in several high-profile civil rights cases, his Eddie Flynn novels have been published in over twenty countries, he’s married with two young children, and in his spare time he is mostly asleep.