When Margaret Blakemore was shot dead in her home on West 74^th Street, it should have been an open and shut case, because there was a witness who knew the murderer. Ruby Johnson knew exactly had killed Margaret and she calls the police anonymously to let them know the identity of the murderer. But it’s not an open and shut case at all. Because there’s something wrong with Ruby Johnson…

Eddie Flynn is defending the man accused of Margaret’s murder and is convinced of his innocence, but he has no idea that someone with her own agenda is manipulating everything. Distracted by the fact that one of his closest allies is in a hospital bed, shot by a bullet intended for Eddie, can the con-man turned lawyer get justice for his client while avoiding the contract that has been taken out on him?

Ah, Eddie Flynn, one of my guilty pleasures. I’ve enjoyed these books ever since Thirteen – sorry, Th1rt3en – the rather bonkers story of a serial killer who frames people and then gets on the jury of the trail of the person that he has framed – and they have always been a fun read. It can’t be easy to come up with the concepts for these stories, especially when Eddie’s first case involved him having 48 hours to defend someone due to having a bomb strapped to his back, but somehow Cavanagh manages it.

Here, we have multiple strands that gel together very well. A contract on Eddie’s life, his distraction due to his colleague being wounded, Ruby’s story (both past and present), the current trial and the question of who actually killed Margaret. It’s not easy to bring that many strands to a satisfactory conclusion, or to make them mesh into a coherent narrative, but Cavanagh does it with aplomb.

On top of that, he does a very good job with the character of Ruby, a tortured soul who could just come across as an unpleasant sociopath (is there such a thing as a pleasant sociopath?) but despite her actions, this reader did find himself feeling sorry for her. A bit. Another character who could have come across as a stereotype is Mr Christmas – I’ll say no more about him, but he ended up being far more complex than I expected.

I mentioned in my review of The Accomplice that it was the best book in the series since Thirteen. Well, while I still think Thirteen is the best in the series due to the daft concept (and the fact that Cavanagh makes it work), this one runs it a very close second…

Witness 8 is out on August 1^st in ebook and hardback. Many thanks to Headline for the e-review copy.