Steve Cavanagh was kind enough to sit down with Crimespree for a chat about THE CROSS, the prequel novella to Steve’s truly excellent Eddie Flynn series, which is available in audiobook (only!) now.
THE CROSS is a prequel to the Eddie Flynn series, but does it need to be read (or, in this case, listened to) in order?
The events in the in the novella take place before the events in the first book, THE DEFENSE, but the series can be read in any order.
This isn’t true of all series, but I think the Eddie Flynn books are written in such a way that readers can jump in at any point
That’s exactly how I wanted it to be. That can be tricky sometimes because I want readers who’ve read all the books to have the same enjoyment as someone who’s just picking it up for the first time and doesn’t know any of the characters. So it’s trying to find ways of introducing everyone so that new readers aren’t lost and old readers aren’t bored.
Side note: Readers who’ve enjoyed the Eddie Flynn series already, definitely will not be bored with THE CROSS!
I don’t want to have a big block of text at the start of each book to say, “Right. Well, as we all know, here’s what happened last time.” So I try to let the characters, speak for who they are by what they do.
I’ll have a scene with Eddie in court at the start or doing something and people know, “Okay, I know exactly who this character is.” And you don’t feel as if you’re missing out on half a joke that someone’s told. So they’re all designed to be read in any order. And the vast majority of my readers have read them out of order.
Before you were a full-time author, you were an accomplished attorney in Ireland. Yet Eddie is a lawyer in New York. Why?
Because there are certain constraints on solicitors. I was a solicitor advocate, which meant I did a lot of courtroom work, as well as being in the office. But a solicitor advocate can’t do a murder trial on their own; there is also a barrister, and that would mean creating two characters. And one of them would have to have a funny wig and that didn’t work for the type of book that I wanted to write. So setting it in America solved those problems, and I love American crime fiction. I read crime fiction from everywhere but American crime fiction’s my favorite probably,
Did you spend time in New York watching actual trials?
I have done since, but I wrote the first three books without ever having visited the United States. But I think when I first visited New York and I picked up things, a lot of that helped. I remember going into the courtroom in Manhattan on Center Street and watched a bit of a trial. And I thought, “I can’t use any of this ’cause no one would believe me.”
But I did use some things. For example, the judge in that trial, it was kind of a mafia sort of trial, and the mob’s lawyer was a chancer. He was really pushing the boat out in terms all questions he was asking. And the judge had a standing desk and no chair (he must have had something wrong with his back).
The mob’s lawyer was cross-examining a witness, a doctor, I think, and the judge was just pacing and checking his back and rolling his eyes. And the jury’s watching all of this, of course. And I was sort of thinking, ” no one would believe that if I put it in.”
So I have to be careful about using real things. But I did use one real thing from that trip, that first research trip. If you want to know what cases are going on in that building, you go up to room 1000, and there is a whiteboard where someone has written down the names and the kind of case it is, and what room it’s in. So Eddie uses that to play a little con, to trick a witness at the start of one of the books
Certain authors seem to have extraordinary powers of observation, and, I would venture that you’re probably one of those people who, say, if you go into a bar, you can probably come out of that bar and tell me how many kinds of whiskey were available and in which order they were. That kind of detail.
Occasionally, I will notice things. That’s the way my brain works. I’ll pick up a vibe or something like that, and that’s maybe the legal training or maybe it’s just me. I just lots of little details. I will forget larger details like what I’m supposed to be in the bar for or who I’m supposed to be meeting. But I’ll as you say, I’ll be able to tell you what whiskey there is there and some of the license plates of the cars parked outside. So it works in funny ways.
For Eddie, do you see an end to the series at this point?
No, I don’t.
Excellent!
I like writing about him. I like his voice; I like his point of view; I like the way he conducts himself; I like his values and his morals. And sometimes his lack of values and morals. He’s a very interesting character to write about, particularly in these times. I do try to learn from writers who are better than me, the likes of Michael Connelly or James Lee Burke, and occasionally, I’ll go and do a standalone.
I’ll do a couple of Eddie Flynn books, two or three, and then I’ll try and do a standalone so I’m telling a different type of story with different types of characters, and I think I learn from doing that. It’s a different type of skillset, so I can take that away then, and hopefully the things I’ve learned from writing that book, I can bring back to the series.
With THE CROSS, did you write it differently? Because it was initially published in the UK as an ebook and is a prequel, was the writing process any different for that?
What had happened was, the Northern Ireland Arts Council had given me an award to write something, and it was shortly after a gentleman named Eric Garner was murdered by the police on the street. He was strangled in New York—or asphyxiated, I should say, and it was all filmed. This is years before George Floyd. And I, in my own practice, was a criminal and civil lawyer, so I’d sued the police a few times, not for people getting choked, but certainly for people getting beat up or wrongfully arrested or things like that.
So, when I saw that, I was just completely enraged, and I looked up whether police in America were allowed to choke people. And of course, in New York, they’re not, and chokeholds were outlawed years ago. But there was a report published, before this man lost his life, to show there were huge complaints about chokeholds, and some officers were even found to have choked suspects, and they weren’t fired, they didn’t lose their jobs. Their vacation pay was reduced by a week or something.
So I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to cross-examine the police officers.
And of course I can’t do that, but Eddie Flynn can do that. So I created a story about a widow suing the police because her husband had been murdered by police officers, and of course I want it to be thrilling, entertaining, so there are lots of other storylines in it about corrupt officers and different things going on.
It all leads up to the cross-examination, and it’s called the cross, with Eddie asking questions of different high-up police officers, and the statistics and facts all used in that are all real.
So that was basically me exorcizing my demons from that and getting my anger out in the open about what had happened to that poor man.
Do you hear very often from readers who disagree with your take on justice?
On occasion, I will get the odd strange comment on social media or the odd email. There’s one of my books, The Devil’s Advocate, which deals with the threat from the far right, the neo-Nazis and, I did have some complaints about the way that they had been portrayed in the book, people asking, “why are they the bad guys?” Sometimes there’s no point in replying to something. You just sort of underline it and say, “well, there you go. I can’t help you, I’m afraid.” But those comments usually for me are, thankfully, few and far between.
I think that readers can sometimes take a story very personally, but at the same time, it’s the author’s story. It’s not theirs.
What I want the reader to take from my books is entertainment. I really want the reader to be entertained by a novel. And occasionally it will touch on issues, some books more than others. But I think that’s important, reading as an escape. Mine are not political books, largely. There are little bits of politics here and there, but most of them aren’t.
I was on a jury once where the woman charged (with a relatively minor offence) was apparently guilty, but she had a terrible defense lawyer. I found that so frustrating, because regardless, she deserved a capable defense. I wished she had Eddie Flynn defending her.
That’s a huge thing, especially in terms of wrongful convictions. People having ineffective counsel is a big problem.
I think part of what makes Eddie Flynn such a great character is that he’s not always wholly constrained by the by the bounds of the rules within which he is meant to operate. He’s going to do his best for his client, come hell or high water.
Exactly. That’s a reflection of a couple of things. I do believe that all great trial lawyers have all the same skills as great con artists. Like distraction, persuasion, manipulation. Because you have the facts, and each side is going to tell their story, and the jury has to decide who’s telling the truth. And if you can manipulate, then you win. But I also think that the judicial system in America, and in lots of other countries too, is very biased against the defense. There’s all the power of the state and then you have a lawyer, most of the times a public defender with 500 cases, and they dedicate the time to help everyone. So in Eddie’s case, it takes a dishonorable man to bend the rules and try to even those scales a little bit.
But he will always do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
We all encounter things in our lives over which we wish we had more control. And seeing someone sort of take that control… There’s something greatly heartening about it. And he will put everything on the line for them. So there’s an element of his own sacrifice, what he sacrifices from his own life for his clients as well.
Will Eddie ever leave New York?
He did once, in THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE. Most of that book is set in a fictional town in Alabama, but I don’t know if I would do that again.
Is it surprising to readers how much of your books, given that they’re legal thrillers, take place outside the courtroom?
I see a lot of reviews from readers who say, “Oh, I don’t read courtroom thrillers.” To me, they’re sort of suspense novels, and there’s a lot of suspense outside the courtroom. And then instead of having the denouement where the villain is captured on the run, in my books, it happens in a courtroom.
TWO KINDS OF STRANGER is out in March.
