Its criminal ordinary laws no longer seem to apply to | UK News

Bestselling creator Steve Cavanagh used his outrage at the growing quantity of mega wealthy people who laws don’t seem to apply to as a central theme to his latest Eddie Flynn thriller. The tenth novel about a con-artist turned defence lawyer was impressed by his love of American creator Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which was tailored into a Hollywood movie starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, as nicely as the hit US TV drama Succession, which starred Brian Cox as a media magnate.

And this gave Steve the place to begin for exploring the new wave of people that have the wealth and energy of small nations, often now from tech and AI ventures. His latest Eddie Flynn e-book, One Of Us Is Guilty, is out on Thursday (July 30) and tells the story of Patrick and his spouse Vanessa. Patrick, the inheritor to a big media empire, is the son of one of the most highly effective males in the world, who has political ambitions for him.

Steve says: “The book opens on one night when Patrick realises his mistress has been keeping things form him, and lying to him. And that is the same night that Vanessa finds out Patrick has been having an affair. It’s the following morning that the mistress is found dead, and they were both in her apartment that night

“So you know one of them has killed her, but you don’t know which one. And that is our jumping off point for the book. One of them is charged with murder by the police and Eddie Flynn has to come in to defend them. But throughout the book he is wondering if he is defending the right member of the couple? Who is guilty and who is not? And the has to wrestle with his own conscience and demons throughout the case.”

Steve, a former lawyer and one-time bouncer, who was born and introduced up in Belfast but now lives close to Lisburn, with spouse Tracy and their two youngsters, is famend for his brilliantly twisty thrillers and never is this more so than with One Of Us Is Guilty.

He says: “I was aiming for a book that is a cross between Gone Girl and Succession. I loved that sort of toxic couple that is going on in Gone Girl, where they are both keeping secrets form each other.”

Asked if any real-life figures impressed his latest e-book, he provides: “The characters in the book are in no way inspired by Rupert Murdoch, which I have to say for legal reasons!

“But one of the themes I explore in the book, which is something that has come up in the series before, is that people think there are rules and laws, and that these apply to everyone, but that is now not the case. The thing we are seeing that is totally out in the open now, no one is bothering to hide it anymore, is that everyone is talking about AI, but it is an industry built on piracy. It is the largest intellectual property theft in history and no government has yet said, ‘wait a minute, you can’t do that’. It’s being left to the individual to do this.

“We live in a world where the powerful have more power than ever before. We have individual people that have the wealth and power of nation states, so it is very turbulent times.

“That is why Eddie Flynn is fun to write because he does not really play by the rules, he knows the system is biased and he tries to bend the rules to even up the scales of justice and make everything a lot more fair.”

The creator, a former human rights lawyer in Belfast, got here up with the concept for his character Eddie Flynn while cross-examining a witness in a case, before changing into a full-time author in 2019.

“I was cross-examining someone, and I tricked them into revealing they were lying. It hit me that con artists have the exact same skills as good trial lawyers: distraction, misdirection, persuasion, all of that,” he admits. “So that was the basic idea for Eddie, and then I gave him a few characteristics of my own.”

He says it’s a privilege to still be writing about the character as the first three books in the collection didn’t promote, so in publishing the fourth he was working on a standalone for his next one and then planning to come up with a new character.

That fourth e-book was Thirteen, which gained the distinguished Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, for which the Express is the media companion, and went on to turn out to be a big vendor.

Steve is trying ahead to returning to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival held yearly at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, from Thursday to Sunday, where this yr’s award winners will likely be announced on Thursday evening.

He says: “I’m very much looking forward to it. Hopefully we’ll have good weather and it’s always a joy going to Harrogate as I get to see people I have known for years, and you chat with readers and writers.

“The events themselves are brilliant, and it’s very collegiate. It’s the start of a two-week book tour for me around the UK and Ireland, so I can’t wait.”

A TV or movie adaptation of the Eddie Flynn collection has been underway for the past two years, but Steve is remaining tight-lipped about that, while also working on a standalone thriller for his next e-book, which is in the early phases.

He admits life is nice but provides he one remorse is creating such a good and calculating protagonist in Eddie Flynn: “Sometimes I think I should’t have created a character who is so smart – it would have been much easier (to write) if he was dumber!”

*One Of Us Is Guilty by Steve Cavanagh (Headline, £16.99) is out on Thursday. Steve is showing at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate from July 23-26. Visit harrogateinternational festivals.com for info and bookings.