KEVIN FLYNN - "Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit"

Selected Works

Fiction

"Rock Creek" (Kilimanjaro Press, kilimanjaro-press.com, 2024)

"Rock Creek" rises from Washington, D.C., 1952: a murder mystery, a political thriller, and a work of historical fiction that brings to life a time and place that are so distant, yet still seem so close.

It's about the nation's capital in the early 1950s: the most important city in the world at the midpoint of the American century, but at heart a small Southern town deeply divided along race and class boundaries. It's about those boundaries and what happens to people who dare to try to cross them.

It's about rebellion and protest, power and sex. But most of all it's about two people. Emily Rose: a beautiful Capitol Hill staffer with a tragic past, rooted in the Holocaust, from which she tries to escape but never quite can. A woman who ends up dumped and abandoned in the city's Rock Creek Park, her death raising the mystery that animates the book.

And Shane Kinnock: a homicide detective with one foot in the most refined part of town and the other in its seediest. When the book begins he's at the low point of his life and his career, still shell-shocked from war and scarred by family tragedy. He sees the prospect of redemption in Emily's story but will find that it draws him to close to insanity. In the end, it is his perseverance in solving the book's central mystery -- and finally coming to grips with the moral choices of his past -- that gives the book its enduring spirit.

Non-fiction

"Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit" (Putnam, 2007)

"Relentless Pursuit" follows Kevin's personal mission as a D.C. homicide prosecutor dedicated to bringing justice and closure to the family of a brutally murdered mother and daughter, during a time in which his own father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. More than a mere police procedural account of an investigation and trial, "Relentless Pursuit" is a story about two families -- the victims' and Kevin's -- and how their ordeals intertwined, with each spiritually sustaining the other in a time of tragedy.

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"Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit"

REVIEWS OF RELENTLESS PURSUIT

From Publishers Weekly:

"Starred Review. In 1993, Kevin Flynn was a 36-year-old U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., when he was assigned to a case involving the murders of Diane Hawkins and her 13-year-old daughter, Katrina Harris. All signs point to Norman Harrell, Hawkins' former boyfriend and the father of one of her sons; the murders occurred just days before Hawkins was to meet Harrell in court over a child support dispute. As Flynn works through the tumultuous early days of the trial, he's surprised by the affection and faith of the "populous Hawkins clan," and prodded on by thoughts of his own wife and child. Against a backdrop of everyday life and domestic complications -- including his father's diagnosis with lung cancer -- the prosecutor chronicles the case in meticulous detail, taking readers step by step through the unfolding courtroom drama. The portrait of Harrell that emerges is chilling; remarking on their similarities (both prosecutor and defendant have 'loner's souls'), Flynn surmises that something 'had been horribly miswired in him. And the sad thing was, I don't think he ever knew it.' Flynn's is a fascinating, rewarding story of one attorney's dogged determination to exact justice."

From the Washington Post:

"RELENTLESS PURSUIT works well on many levels: as a police procedural and courtroom drama, as a candid portrait of life in black Washington and as an example of how decent people of both races can work together against the violence that threatens us all. The recent past has not been kind to America's prosecutors; the growing number of innocent people freed from prison by DNA testing has demonstrated that at least some are overzealous, incompetent or simply corrupt. RELENTLESS PURSUIT reminds us of all those other prosecutors who are honest, skilled and fighting to protect society from monsters. One does not ask that they also be good writers, but in Flynn's case that's an unexpected bonus."

From the Washington Times:

"Not just a page-turner but an eye-opener as well ... A great story, to be sure, but also with a fascinating window into this darkest of places in human nature ... Flynn tells the story with a vivid attention to detail that would be quite difficult for a novelist to match."

From George Pelecanos, author of THE NIGHT GARDENER:

"RELENTLESS PURSUIT is a memoir and law enforcement procedural that reads like a thriller. Kevin Flynn shines a knowing light on the impact of a murder on a family, a community, and those who police and prosecute the case. An auspicious debut."

From James Grady, author of THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and MAD DOGS:

"Kevin Flynn's heart-wrenching account takes readers beyond his harrowing prosecutorial pursuit of a vicious killer to illuminate the inner workings of our justice system at its best."

From Jonathan Harr, author of A CIVIL ACTION:

"This true story about one prosecutor's obsession will capture you and keep you reading until late in the night. It reads like the best of fictional crime thrillers, but it's better because it's real."

From Ronald Kessler, author of THE BUREAU and THE FBI:

"What a triumph! RELENTLESS PURSUIT combines the spellbinding tension of a masterfully written mystery novel with the authenticity of an account by a veteran prosecutor who has a great eye for detail."