Steve Cavanagh

Practises law in Belfast and writes American courtroom thrillers about Eddie Flynn, a con artist who became a defence lawyer and never fully retired the first skill.

Thirteen has the best premise in the series: the serial killer is not on trial, he is on the jury. Cavanagh builds each book around a legal trick that turns out to be real, and the courtroom procedure is accurate in a way most of the genre does not bother with.

He has also written standalones, and the Irish crime scene he came out of is now unreasonably strong.