Book Talk: Cavanagh, ‘Kill for Me, Kill for You’

I can’t think of a better mystery writer whose debut novel was published after 2014 than Steve Cavanagh, an Irish lawyer who no longer practices at the bar. After his first novel, “The Defense,” was published, a half dozen books arrived on the shelves in short order. I suspect that at least some of them had been written before his first novel was noticed by a publisher. Then, we had to wait two years for “Kill for Me, Kill for You” (2024, 353 pages in softcover format, with a bonus short story, “The Lobster Shift.”)

When I initially saw the title, I thought Oh, No! another rendition of the 1951 Alfred Hitchcock movie, “Strangers on a Train.” But Cavanagh mentions the movie at least 3 or 4 times throughout the book, so we know that he was mindful not to copy the plot. And, he doesn’t. 

Of course, the book does involve the concept of people killing for strangers so that the strangers can establish an iron-clad alibis and the killer will have no connection at all to the victim, and no motive. And, of course, the favor is reciprocal. That’s the “given.” But Cavanagh takes the reader on a baffling journey around that theme.