Book review: Punished by a kindness to strangers

Steve Cavanagh’s latest outing is an intense and fast-paced page turner. File picture: Moya Nolan

• Two Kinds of Stranger 
• Steve Cavanagh 
• Headline, €16.99 

The novel opens with TikToker Elly Parker heading through Grand Central Station to an important meeting.

She has built up a huge following on social media for her videos about make-up, lifestyle, and in particular for her random acts of kindness. 

Her life is happy, she’s recently married James and is spending lots of time with her best friend Harriet. 

She gets home and continues to live stream her video, which leads to her discovering James and Harriet in bed together.

The video clip goes viral, and her life and the lives of her husband and friend change drastically.

Some time later, when heading to a meeting with her agent, Elly comes across a man struggling with a suitcase on stairs in the subway as his leg is in a cast. 

Her immediate reaction is to help — as she always does with strangers, and advocates for others to do the same. 

That’s how she ends up being accused of murdering James and Harriet.

Two Kinds of Stanger is the ninth book in Steve Cavanagh’s series featuring criminal defence attorney Eddie Flynn, who used to be a con artist. 

This reader had never heard of the author, this series, or his other novels before, but will definitely be looking for them now. You don’t need to have read any the others to enjoy this book.

As a former con artist, Flynn uses every trick in the book, every bluff, to ensure his clients receive not guilty verdicts.

 Elly’s case is a real challenge, she has a motive, while no-one else does. She is the perfect victim for the sadistic game carried out by the sociopath known as Logan.

Flynn’s colleagues are interesting characters; they include Harry, a former judge; and Kate, who is Flynn’s moral conscience; and the pairing of Bloch, with her rigid focus; and volatile Lake, make the action scenes believable. Each of them really adds to the story.

Here’s how Kate describes Eddie Flynn’s attitude to the law: “He thought the system was unfair, unjust, and it took a conman to balance those scales of justice.”

Flynn understands the challenges Kate faces defending her clients: “Kate Brooks was better than me in every conceivable way.

“She was a better lawyer, smarter, braver and she had an absolute belief in what is right and what is wrong.

“No one tells you that when you become a lawyer you have to make moral compromises. You have to put aside your beliefs and trust the system…”

The narrative moves between Eddie, Elly, Kate, and the man known as Logan, the name he gave Elly.

Logan is meticulous in his planning and in manipulating people, so clever that he is almost charismatic. He is as believable and interesting as Eddie and his colleagues. 

Readers will empathise with Elly and what happens to her. Even those of us who are not particularly enamoured with social media influencers cannot fail to warm to her rather naïve and trusting nature. 

She is punished because of her kindness towards strangers.

The novel is fast-paced, full of tension and threat, literally a page turner. It includes some scenes in a US prison, which are both horrifying and believable.

Author Steve Cavanagh is a former lawyer himself. What is remarkable is not that the author’s series are set in New York, but that he’s from Belfast where he still lives. 

That’s similar to Lee Child, the English author who sets his Reacher novels in the US. 

To do so successfully is a feat, and Cavanagh’s books have all been bestsellers.

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