One Of Us Is Guilty

Cavanagh’s latest chapter in the life of former con-artist turned defense attorney Eddie Flynn is a violently disturbing thriller built around a New York Courtroom. It also provokes deep contemplation into how extreme wealth coupled to a lust for power becomes deadly in a capitalist society. It is of little surprise that the author is an experienced trial lawyer with a robust sense of humour and proportion.

Told from alternating viewpoints, we find Eddie Flynn [and his team] caught in a high-stakes legal battle between Patrick and Vanessa Vanderpool [an extremely wealthy married couple]. Patrick is the son of media mogul Julian Vanderpool. Currently challenging Governor Fairfax Coleridge III for political office – Patrick is bankrolled by his wealthy and bullying father. With great wealth comes great power, including enhanced sexual appetites. Having an affair with Molly Green, one of his young assistants at his election office was not a good idea. It’s not long before his wife Vanessa discovers her husband’s indiscretion. The news of the affair during Patrick’s political campaign endangers elderly Julian Vanderpool’s aspirations in making his family the most powerful dynasty in America.

When Molly Green is found murdered in her apartment, Cavanagh obtains the title [and theme] for his novel, for the suspects are either Patrick or Vanessa Vanderpool. Each have their motives.

The elder patriarch Julian Vanderpool’s legal team of Rex Buchanan and Ronald Duff subcontract Eddie Flynn to act as Vanessa’s defence lawyer. Incriminating evidence has been found by the New York District Attorney to prosecute Vanessa Vanderpool for Molly Green’s murder. Flynn queries why the powerful Buchanan and Duff legal offices haven’t been directly appointed to defend Vanessa Vanderpool, and why the odd couple of NYPD detectives [the inexperienced Lorraine Carey and demoted Ben Larkin] were assigned to issue the arrest warrant.

And as the Bard would say “therein, lies the rub”.

The narrative that Cavanagh weaves becomes a tortuous endurance test for Eddie Flynn, and his team from their low-rent Tribeca office [situated on the floor above a tattoo parlour]. While the court case takes shape, outside the pews and redbrick lurks dangerous shapes in the form of a South African hit-team, devious political figures from Patrick Vanderpool’s campaign office [Geoff Gilbert and Heidi Swanson], the legal overseer Samantha Voss and dark mysteries in the Hamptons.  

In order to counter the money and muscle of the Vanderpool family, Eddie Flynn again calls upon the skills and loyalty of his unconventional team. His back is protected in Court by friend [the retired Judge] Harry Ford; while on-the-ground, he deploys the skills of the weird PI duo of Bloch and Lake as well as the FBI and his own Forensic specialist. When Eddie Flynn’s adversaries play dirty by dragging his estranged teenage daughter Amy into the arena, then our unconventional lawyer seeks assistance from ‘Jimmy the Hat’ and his underworld fraternity.

The physical violence Eddie Flynn [and his team] confront is balanced by the slippery courtroom drama he has to battle. There are witnesses called, like Alison [who was the neighbour of the murdered Molly Green], as well as the sitting Judge Yvonne Tanner who seem to be aligned with the Vanderpool’s family goals, which are curiously in conflict with Eddie Flynn’s defence case.

And so the characters manoeuvre themselves through the complex narrative, with humour, insight and brutal violence which culminates in an explosive and thought-provoking climax.

Order may have been restored, but there has been a cost as one Eddie Flynn’s associate’s states “you can run on red for long, but sooner or later something was going to blow”.

Less of a Novel, More an Experience.

Miss this at your Peril.