Ask the Author: Steve Hadden
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Steve Hadden
How far would you go to save your family? That’s a question that’s at the center of my new book, The Victim of the System. The book’s elevator speech goes like this: A hometown sports hero turned investigator races against time and the most powerful family in Pittsburgh to solve a series of cryptic clues and save a ten-year-old genius on trial for murder.
The Victim of the System is a thriller about the abyss between the justice system and closure told with the story of three families that have each experienced a devasting trauma that’s rocked the core of their family unit. Both the protagonist and antagonists in the story face the question: How far would you go to save your family?
The book’s roots are set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I must say here and now that it’s a great city with great people. The characters and the story are entirely fictitious. I’d had the idea for the story years ago. The most visceral part of the plot came from a painful experience I had with the court system years ago. That experience confirmed what a lawyer friend of mine had said. Rarely did someone get exactly what they wanted and very few ever got closure from the court system. Then, when I learned that Pennsylvania was only one of two states in the nation that automatically charged children as adults if they were charged with murder, the story began to take shape.
The protagonist, Ike Rossi, is a forty-one-year-old hometown sports hero who’s haunted by the murder of his parents twenty-two years ago. When his parents were murdered, he gave up his football scholarship and came home to raise his nine-year-old sister and find his parents’ killer. Now, he owns the bar and restaurant where his mother worked. He specializes in private security and investigative services in the oil and gas business. When he decides to help Jack, the ten-year-old genius on trial for murder, he’s pulled into an abyss filled with the painful sticky emotions of his parents’ unsolved murder twenty-two years ago.
The image on the cover is of the Bridge of Sighs at the Allegheny County Courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh. The bridge connects the courthouse to the old jail, and prisoners would be taken across the bridge to the court to determine their fate. It was the bridge between the abyss of prison and the closure of their case. Today, the bridge is still used to temporarily hold prisoners during court appearances, but the prison now houses the Family Law Court. The courthouse is a magnificent building with beautiful murals inside, including the Mural of Justice. The courthouse figures prominently both early and late in the book and Ike’s view of the courthouse and justice changes dramatically from the beginning of the story to its end.
I believe powerful thrillers lie at the intersection of great stories, interesting characters, dramatic human conflict and the edge of science, and each of those elements are incorporated into this intriguing story. The book was just released, so if you like powerful thrillers, pick up your copy of The Victim of the System today.
The Victim of the System is a thriller about the abyss between the justice system and closure told with the story of three families that have each experienced a devasting trauma that’s rocked the core of their family unit. Both the protagonist and antagonists in the story face the question: How far would you go to save your family?
The book’s roots are set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I must say here and now that it’s a great city with great people. The characters and the story are entirely fictitious. I’d had the idea for the story years ago. The most visceral part of the plot came from a painful experience I had with the court system years ago. That experience confirmed what a lawyer friend of mine had said. Rarely did someone get exactly what they wanted and very few ever got closure from the court system. Then, when I learned that Pennsylvania was only one of two states in the nation that automatically charged children as adults if they were charged with murder, the story began to take shape.
The protagonist, Ike Rossi, is a forty-one-year-old hometown sports hero who’s haunted by the murder of his parents twenty-two years ago. When his parents were murdered, he gave up his football scholarship and came home to raise his nine-year-old sister and find his parents’ killer. Now, he owns the bar and restaurant where his mother worked. He specializes in private security and investigative services in the oil and gas business. When he decides to help Jack, the ten-year-old genius on trial for murder, he’s pulled into an abyss filled with the painful sticky emotions of his parents’ unsolved murder twenty-two years ago.
The image on the cover is of the Bridge of Sighs at the Allegheny County Courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh. The bridge connects the courthouse to the old jail, and prisoners would be taken across the bridge to the court to determine their fate. It was the bridge between the abyss of prison and the closure of their case. Today, the bridge is still used to temporarily hold prisoners during court appearances, but the prison now houses the Family Law Court. The courthouse is a magnificent building with beautiful murals inside, including the Mural of Justice. The courthouse figures prominently both early and late in the book and Ike’s view of the courthouse and justice changes dramatically from the beginning of the story to its end.
I believe powerful thrillers lie at the intersection of great stories, interesting characters, dramatic human conflict and the edge of science, and each of those elements are incorporated into this intriguing story. The book was just released, so if you like powerful thrillers, pick up your copy of The Victim of the System today.
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