The Defense

Lawyer Eddie Flynn is in a bind. His current case involves the Russian mob and to ensure that he uses his courtroom tricks to their benefit, they've kidnapped Flynn's daughter and strapped a bomb to him. The bomb is set to go off 48 hours from the start of the trial, and since he'll be in court for most of that time, it seems impossible to prevent the deaths of his daughter and hundreds of people in the New York courthouse. But this is Eddie Flynn, amateur magician and a master of legerdemain in front of a jury. This debut is in the vein of Grisham, Turow, and Margolin, and even though Cavanagh seems a bit facile in having his protagonist avoid one catastrophe after another, he has created a fascinating character and is skilled in describing the chess moves that go on during the trial. Narrator Adam Sims does a superb job of keeping the story flowing. The 48 hours given Flynn to present a defense in a seemingly open-and-shut case is stretched to ten and a half hours of suspense, action, terror, and surprises.