Review: Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh

Name: Witness 8
Series: Eddie Flynn #8
Author: Steve Cavanagh
Publisher: Headline
Format: Kindle
Genres: Legal Thriller, Mystery, Contemporary, Crime, Adult
Spice Rating: None

Rating:

Synopsis: Goodreads
What if the witness was more twisted than the killer?

Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson.

A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone’s dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don’t involve telling the authorities the truth.

Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson’s—the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson’s DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client’s life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head.

Review:

Witness 8 is the 8th installement in the Eddie Flynn series, so there may be spoilers for the previous books in the series. Each book can be read as it’s own thing, characters previously introduced will have a reintroduction in some way so that you’re not lost should you decide to pick up just a couple of them. However, Witness 8 felt different to the previous books in the series…

These Eddie Flynn books always follow a somewhat predictable format – Eddie / Eddie’s team will get asked to take on a case, they’ll invesitage the case, there will be court room happenings and drama, and then there is the fall out from the court room scenes. Sometimes there is another story line going on at the same time, other times it’s all connected. And even though what happens in each of those sections differs from book to book, Witness 8 was the first one that just felt different to me.

We again have multiple POVs and I am loving this aspect of these books – whether it’s Eddie or a member of his team, the killer, or someone else, the POVs that are used always feel purposeful and never there just for the sake of it. But, I don’t know if it’s because of the extra POVs that this ‘different’ feeling cropped up in Witness 8. We spent, seemingly anyway, less time in the court rooms than normal. There was a lot more going on outside of the court room and whilst I didn’t mind that, I wished we got more Kate chapters as she was the one handling the court room for the most part in this one.

I still loved Witness 8 – it didn’t hit in the same way The Accomplice did, but it still had me on the edge of my seat and having to put the book down in parts because I just couldn’t handle everything that was happening on the page. It was tense and fast paced, and at times it felt hopeless… But Cavanagh knows how to hook you and keep you gripped. The endings are always worth it, in my opinion.

I absolutely cannot wait for the 9th installment, that releases a the end of July!! If I didn’t have other commitments I would absolutely be going to Steve Cavanagh’s Waterstones event in Birmingham in August! I’m gutted to be missing it. But I think I will follow Cavanagh’s writing career where ever he goes! An absolute must-buy author for me.

Kickbacks and Greenbacks…

Reading With Tyler