whatcathyreadnext

An Engineered Injustice (Philadelphia Legal #2) by William L. Myers, Jr.

March 20, 2018March 16, 2018 whatcathyreadnext

Philadelphia Legal Series

I’m delighted to welcome William L. Myers, Jr., author of the legal thriller, An Engineered Injustice, to What Cathy Read Next today. An Engineered Injustice is the second book in the Philadelphia Legal series, the follow-up to the bestselling and much praised, A Criminal Defense. I’ll admit I don’t read an awful lot of crime fiction or legal thrillers but I think I can spot the prospect of a good story when I see it. Therefore, I quickly accepted William’s offer of a review copy of his book. I’m really looking forward to reading An Engineered Injustice. In the meantime, I’m pleased to bring you a fantastic Q&A with William.

If you’re tempted to enter the world of Philadelphia Legal, you can find purchase links below.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

About the Book

What if the deadliest train wreck in the nation’s history was no accident?

When a passenger train derails in North Philadelphia with fatal results, idealistic criminal defense attorney Vaughn Coburn takes on the most personal case of his young career. The surviving engineer is his cousin Eddy, and when Eddy asks Vaughn to defend him, he can’t help but accept. Vaughn has a debt to repay, for he and his cousin share an old secret – one that changed both their lives forever.

As blame for the wreck zeros in on Eddy, Vaughn realizes there’s more to this case than meets the eye. Seeking the truth behind the crash, he finds himself the target of malicious attorneys, corrupt railroad men, and a mob boss whose son perished in the accident and wants nothing less than cold-blooded revenge. With the help of his ex-con private investigator and an old flame who works for the competition, Vaughn struggles to defeat powerful forces – and to escape his own past built on secrets and lies.

Format: ebook, paperback (317 pp.) Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing)
Published: 23^rd January 2018 Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find A Criminal Defence and An Engineered Injustice on Goodreads

Interview with William L. Myers, Jr., author of An Engineered Injustice

William, welcome to What Cathy Read Next! Without giving too much away, can you tell me a bit about An Engineered Injustice?

An Engineered Injustice is a fast-paced, plot driven novel built around the crash of an Amtrak passenger train. The novel’s protagonist, attorney Vaughn Coburn, is the cousin of Eddy Coburn, the train’s engineer. When Eddy turns to Vaughn for help, Vaughn has no choice but to answer the call; he owes Eddy as a result of something that happened when they were younger, an event that threw Eddy’s life into a tailspin while Vaughn skated through and went on to success. At the outset of the story, Vaughn expects he’s only going to have to help Eddy through the NTSB investigation. But Vaughn quickly realizes that the train crash was no accident and that Eddy is being set up to face criminal charges.

As the story unfolds, Vaughn finds himself pitted against the most powerful forces in Philadelphia, the villains who actually caused the crash and, even more worrisome, Jimmy Nunzio, a mob leader whose son was killed in the crash and who is seeking blood vengeance. Vaughn teams up with Erin Doyle, his strong-willed ex-girlfriend, and the two of them embark on a bold and dangerous plan to unmask the villains and save Eddy before Nunzio decides take his revenge. The protagonists’ quest takes them on a roller-coaster of ups and downs, both in and outside the courtroom and it isn’t clear until the very end whether they will succeed, or even live through it themselves.

An Engineered Injustice is the second book in your Philadelphia Legal series (the first being A Criminal Defense). How, if at all, are the two books connected?

An Engineered Injustice takes place in the same world as does A Criminal Defense – the same law firm and the same city. Many of the characters are the same, though Vaughn, a secondary character in A Criminal Defense takes the lead in An Engineered Injustice, while Mick takes a supporting role. Perhaps the main differences in An Engineered Injustice are the introduction of Erin Doyle, Vaughn’s love interest, and Philly crime boss, Jimmy Nunzio. In Erin Doyle, I wanted to pair Vaughn with a woman every bit his match in wits, legal skills and courage. Erin fits that bill, and then some. Jimmy Nunzio, a truly terrifying personality, was a fun character to write, and he will play a major role in the third book in the Philadelphia Legal series, which is entitled A Killer’s Alibi. Another difference between A Criminal Defense and An Engineered Injustice is that the latter is much more fast-paced than the former and places the protagonists in physical peril. [Great news for fans that there’s going to be a third book in the series!]

Your leading characters are attorneys: Mick McFarland in A Criminal Defense and Vaughn Coburn in An Engineered Injustice. How much of them is based on your own experience as an attorney?

I’ve drawn parts of each character from attorneys I’ve had the fortune (and misfortune) to come up against in my practice. Mick is Machiavellian, very much the puppeteer. I’ve encountered one or two attorneys like that along the way. You learn a lot from them, usually the hard way. Vaughn is young and idealistic, like and I so many of my colleagues were when we first started out. He sets out to do the right thing but finds that sometimes he has to adopt an “ends justifies the means” attitude.

In both books, the lead character faces a conflict between finding the truth and bonds of friendship or family. What is it about this that interests you?

I believe this kind of conflict ads a layer of richness to the story and depth to the characters because it places great stress on the characters, who have to choose between working to achieve true justice and protecting the ones they love.

Is there a scene in the book you found particularly challenging or rewarding to write? If so, why?

In A Criminal Defense, the hardest scenes to write were the confession scenes where the various culpable parties admit to their sins. I had to begin the scenes by making the reader think it was going to play out one way, and then pivot to the real shockers. In An Engineered Injustice, the hardest scenes to write were the ones where Vaughn is facing off with Nunzio. I wanted to really bring home the danger Vaughn was in.

You’ve had a successful career as an attorney. At what point did you decide to write a novel?

I’d like to say I’m an overnight success but I have actually been writing novels for twenty years. It took me that much time – and sweat – to learn the craft, and I always tell aspiring writers to stick with it, and, when reading other authors, to “read for craft” – that is, to read with an eye to learning.

What’s the key to keeping a reader turning the pages when writing a crime thriller?

The key, I believe, is to keep them guessing. Make sure there are enough crests and valleys – and surprises! – along the way that the reader never knows what to expect and feels compelled to turn the page to see what’s going to happen next.

Do you have a special place to write or any writing rituals?

I like to say I do my best writing when I’m not writing. What I mean by that is that many of my best ideas, best scenes, best exchanges of dialogue, happen when I’m not sitting in front of my computer. Every morning, I walk my dogs in Valley Forge Park, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stopped, pulled out my iPhone and dictated for up to five minutes. (It irks the dogs to no end.) I also write during the day by stealing a few minutes here and there while practicing law. I find the writing breaks actually help my legal work, and vice versa.

Which other writers do you admire or enjoy reading?

I love Michael Connelly’s Bosche books and his Lincoln Lawyer series. Another favourite is Dennis Lehane. Perhaps my all-time favourite is Elmore Leonard; I enjoy his terse writing style and spot-on dialogue.

What are you working on next?

I’m just finishing the third book in the Philadelphia Legal series, entitled A Killer’s Alibi. Mick returns as the protagonist to match wits with Jimmy Nunzio, who fights Mick every step of the way as Mick tries to clear him from murder charges.

About the Author

William L. Myers, Jr. is the 2017 No. 6 bestselling Kindle author for his debut novel, A Criminal Defense (Part 1 of the Philadelphia Legal series.) Once you pick up his legal thriller and bestselling novel, A Criminal Defense, it becomes obvious he is not new to the intricacies of the legal profession. Open A Criminal Defense and you’ll find yourself lost in a labyrinth of deceits and hidden agendas, a world where everyone has a secret. You never know what is going to happen next or when the plot is going to take another unexpected turn. In Part 2, An Engineered Injustice (now available on Amazon), you’ll really feel what it’s like to be a young attorney in the trenches, beating the streets, against all odds.

Born in 1958 into a blue-collar family, Mr. Myers inherited a work-ethic that propelled him through college and into the Ivy League at The University of Pennsylvania School of Law. From there, Mr. Myers started his legal career in a Philadelphia-based mega defense firm. After ten years defending corporate America, he realized his heart wasn’t in it. So, with his career on the fast track to success – he gave it all up and started his own firm. It was time to start fighting for the common guy. That was twenty-five years ago and, since then, he has focused on representing railroad employees and other honest, hard-working people who have been injured by others. He has represented thousands of clients in his tenure and has become a highly-regarded litigation attorney up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Connect with William

Author Page ǀ Facebook ǀ Twitter ǀ Instagram ǀ Goodreads

Book Review: The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers

March 19, 2018March 19, 2018 whatcathyreadnext11 Comments

About the Book

“I saw them. Stag-headed men dancing at on the moor at midnight, nostrils flared and steam rising…”

An England divided. From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history. They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is ‘clipping’ – the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death. A charismatic leader, Hartley cares for the poor and uses violence and intimidation against his opponents. He is also prone to self-delusion and strange visions of mythical creatures.

When excise officer William Deighton vows to bring down the Coiners and one of their own becomes turncoat, Hartley’s empire begins to crumble. With the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, the fate of his empire is under threat.

Forensically assembled from historical accounts and legal documents, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance that combines poetry, landscape, crime and historical fiction, whose themes continue to resonate. Here is a rarely-told alternative history of the North.

Format: ebook, paperback, hardcover (360 pp.) Publisher: Bluemoose Books
Published: 17^th May 2017 Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links* (Kindle edition currently 99p on Amazon UK)
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ¦ Publisher ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programmePublisher

Find The Gallows Pole on Goodreads

My Review

The Gallows Pole is one of the books long-listed for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2018. Click here for the full long-list and links to information or my reviews of the long-listed books.

The book recounts events that took place in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, over a few years in the 1760s: the exploits of a gang known as the ‘Cragg Vale Coiners’. ‘Coining’ was the illegal practice of removing shavings of gold from the edges of genuine coins, milling the edges of those coins smooth again and then using the shavings to produce counterfeit coins.

The narrative is interspersed with excerpts from a document written in the first person using vernacular dialogue, eccentric spelling and very little punctuation. Its author is the so-called ’King’ of the coiners, David Hartley. It’s his jail cell testimony – not confession, mind you – he’s keen to point that out. Hartley recounts his first exposure to the coining process in the forges of The Black Country: ‘…What they done is smelt and pour and hammer and mould What they done is hoist and heft and scald and steam And what they done was learn us a new trayde a new way.’

The Gallows Pole transports the reader to a period when the first impact of industrialization and mechanisation was starting to be felt by residents of places like Calderdale. Power was becoming concentrated in the hands of landowners, of factory and mill owners and employment was taking the place of self-employment or small-scale agriculture. Old ways were coming into conflict with the forces of progress and modernity. For many ordinary people, their whole way of life was changing, not necessarily for the better (reminiscent in some ways of the modern day impact of globalisation). It’s not surprising that desperation and poverty should force some to look outside the law for the means to survive. Or, that men like Hartley, should reject the notion of change altogether. [Readers who dislike swearing should skip the next quotation.]

‘An he seys the day of the hand loom is over mass produckshun is cumin wether you lyke it or not aye mass produckshun and organysed laber is what I’m talkin abowt and if youv got any sens about yer yerll embrayce the new ways. And I says fuck the new ways and fuck the company and fuck your fucken scut with a rusted nyfe if yor still thinken on telling King David of Cragg Vale wer it is he can or cannit wander you soppybolickt daft doylem fiddler of beests.’

I think you may be starting to get a sense that creative use of language is a key element of this book. [Can I give a shoutout to the copy editors and proof-readers of the book at this point.] The author evocatively conjures up the atmosphere of the moors; its bleakness but also its harsh beauty. ‘Then when the downpour eased and the clouds passed over to slowly bank across the open moors in the direction of Haworth, the valley slopes were left with a fresh dusting of white, a patchwork of powdered shapes divided by the black streaks of stone walls that snaked over and around copses, hamlets and the top quarries…’

There is a rhythmic, almost poetic quality to the language with frequent use of alliteration and assonance: ‘In to dell and dingle. Gulch and gully.’ ‘From the dells and dales and dingles.’ ‘Slipping and sliding. Gasping and striding.’ Some of the prose is positively audacious – for its use of repetition:

‘Tom Spencer walked to Horsehold and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Burnt Stubb and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Boulder Clough and folk there gave up their coin. Tom Spencer walked to Midgley and folk there gave up their coin…’

And for the lists – sometimes long lists – of names and of places giving a sing-song quality to the writing.

‘Up they came and over they came and through they came. Many men.
Isaac Dewhurst and Absolom Butts.
Thomas Clayton and Benjamin Sutcliffe.
Abraham Lumb and Aloysius Smith and Nathan Horsfall and Matthew Hepworth and Joseph Gelder and Jonathan Bolton.
John Wilcox and Jonas Eastwood.
Fathers and brothers and sons and uncles. Up they came. And others too.’

The language at times is earthy and raw with visceral descriptions of bodily sensations and creative evocations of sights, sounds, smells, tastes. ‘Soot and ash. Snot and spume. Quag and sump and clotted moss.’

The story that unfolds is as compelling as the language. However, despite his criminal activity and the violence perpetrated by those around him, the reader is left with a sense of David Hartley as a tragic figure. He certainly becomes a folk hero in the eyes of the local community. That is, to those who don’t attempt to resist him, swindle him, usurp him or bring him to justice. Retribution is swift and violent for them.

There is a real sense of period atmosphere in The Gallows Pole, of a time when life was hard for many and death was an often close companion. It was definitely not the time or place to be a woman; relegated to the role of child bearer, provider of sexual pleasure (willingly or not) and household drudge. The only sign of tenderness is between Hartley and his wife, and even that is relative.

The Gallows Pole made a deep impression on me. The story was powerfully told and had a marvellous sense of authenticity. However, it was the imaginative writing that really drew me in. It may not turn out to be the closest to my heart of the books on the long-list but its author has certainly earned my admiration. I realise it’s early to be making predictions, especially as I haven’t read all the books on the long-list yet. Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my neck out and say I can see The Gallows Pole being the Days Without End of 2018. In other words, not only making the shortlist but possibly being the eventual winner. If I’m wrong, forget you read this. If it turns out I’m right, remember, you saw it here first.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

In three words: Gritty, compelling, immersive

Try something similar…Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (click here to read my review)

About the Author

Benjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976. He is an award-winning author and journalist. As a journalist he has written about the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River, The Morning Star, Vice, The Quietus, Melody Maker and numerous others.

Pig Iron (2012) was the winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize and runner-up in The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. A controversial combination of biography and novel, Richard (2010), was a bestseller and chosen as a Sunday Times book of the year. Myers’ short story ‘The Folk Song Singer’ was awarded the Tom-Gallon Prize in 2014 by the Society of Authors and published by Galley Beggar Press. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies.

His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature, was the recipient of the Northern Writers’ Award and longlisted for a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 2015. Widely acclaimed, it featured on several end of year lists, and was chosen by Robert Macfarlane in The Big Issue as one of his books of 2014. Turning Blue (2016) was described as a “folk crime” novel, and praised by writers including Val McDermid. A sequel These Darkening Days followed in 2017.

Recipient of the Roger Deakin Award, his novel The Gallows Pole was published to acclaim in 2017. His latest book, Under The Rock, a work of non-fiction, is published May 2018.

He currently lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.

Connect with Benjamin

Website ǀ Twitter ǀ Goodreads

WaltScott_The Gallows Pole WalterScottPrize Bluemoose_logo_400x400