[My Review]
The Defence by Steve Cavanagh is a fast paced and tense legal thriller which follows lawyer Flynn as he tries to save his daughter’s life. This may sound like a pretty run of the mill ‘thriller’ storyline, but this novel felt to me a lot more cut throat and tense than others I’ve read. Firstly, the stakes are really high- his ten year old daughter has been kidnapped andthreatened with death. They even specify the horrific things they’ll do to his daughter if he doesn’t succeed in his ‘mission’. It made me feel pretty sick thinking about it to be honest! Secondly, the way he must save her is by grtting the head of the Russian Mafia, Volchek, off a murder charge (and he is defnitely guilty!) which poses an interesting and challenging mission for the lawyer.
The story begins with Flynn himself being bundled into a car and told what he must do; there’s no easing into it! The story moves very Quickly and there are seems to be some really clever moves played by Flynn in the courtroom to pick legal loopholes in the case against Volchek.
The characters aren’t particularly believable, and some seem very cliched. At times I started to lose track of what was actually going on, which I supposed affected my enjoyment a little, and at some points you definitely need to suspend your disbelief as a lot of lucky occurrences take place which didn’t really ring true to me. Despite these points, though, The Defence was certainly a well-written and action-packed read!
[Rating: 3.5/5] 
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy of this novel in return for an honest review
PS- Yes, I know there have been a lot of really postive reviews recently. If I don’t like a book I won’t mark it very high, I just tend to pick books that I think I’ll enjoy, obviously, and luckily a lot of them don’t disappoint! 🙂