Today marks the publication of The Cut Throat Trial – my fourth book, and my first foray into crime fiction.
And I don’t mind admitting that I’m terrified.
The first three non-fictions were each terrifying in their own way: the complete unknown of Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken in 2018; difficult second-album syndrome of Fake Law (coupled with an unhelpful global pandemic) in 2020; the raw self-exposure of my memoir Nothing But The Truth in 2022.
But a novel – attempting the type of legal thriller that I was not only weaned on, but which doubtless fed my irrational desire to become a criminal barrister – is a whole other kettle of onions. In one sense, it shouldn’t be: I am following the boilerplate advice and Writing What I Know. I have shown three times already that I am capable, with the assistance of a superb editing team, of stringing words together in a way that approaches coherence. And I have the support of a readership who, if they are being truthful on social media, have not all been deterred by what they have read so far.
Yet the fear has lurked throughout, from the inception of the idea for The Cut Throat Trial back in 2022, through the writing and editing process and right up until today. The day it is released on an unsuspecting public.
Fear of what? I don’t actually know. I mean, I don’t think it’s terrible. Enough real crime fiction authors have read the manuscript and had the kindness to say unduly lovely things for us to stick on the book cover, and the press reviews so far have all been positive. Even from outlets who I may have given a bash or two in previous books (The Sun, The Mail, to name but two). So I don’t think it’s terror of how it’s going to be received.
But perhaps it’s related to a fear of meeting expectations in another way. When I decided to try the move to fiction, I was adamant that my lodestar was going to be authenticity. Given how much of the last decade I have spent railing against misrepresentations of the justice system in the media, it would be pretty off-brand to fire off a ghost-written whodunnit about a judge being beaten to death with his own gavel. But more than that, I wanted my fiction to go beyond mere entertainment. It’s another opportunity, it struck me, to inform, illuminate, even educate, but hopefully in a less hectoring way than with the non-fiction. The criminal justice system is, in its raw and naked state, such a perennial generator of drama, suspense and human intrigue that a faithful representation of it should offer every bit as much to narrative fiction as anything that could be conjured up in a writer’s room. Every facet of the human condition is on display in our criminal courts. It is not a binary world of good and bad; of noble cops and prosecutors locking up the bad guys, and swashbuckling defence lawyers freeing the virtuous innocent. Sure, that happens. But that simplistic rendering, beloved of politicians and commentators, reflects a minority. In the majority of criminal cases there is nuance and complexity and the public exposure of winding, tortuous, intersecting lives emanating from every corner of society. Criminal justice, if it is possible to draw a coherent moral from the chaos on display every day, shines a blinding light on just how fucked up we all are. Defendants, witnesses, lawyers, judges. All of us. A system designed by humans, for humans, with all the flaws and fault lines and unsatisfactory, unresolved unknowns that that entails.
That is what I want to capture. A gritty and uneasy and unrelentingly honest reflection of the murkiness and unknowability of the ways in which human beings try to excavate justice.
That, I think, is the expectation that matters. The one that haunts.
It’s the one I hope to exorcise in The Cut Throat Trial.
On the subject of which, the elevator pitch:
In the early hours of New Year’s Day, police find the mutilated body of a seventy-four-year-old man lying in the street, a large knife sticking out of his chest. Three teenagers, caked in blood, are arrested and charged with his murder. The Prosecution argue that this was a random joint attack; three feral youths acting out an internet urban legend. Each defendant denies murder. Each is pointing the finger at the other two. Each has his own tale to tell.
This is the story of their trial.
If that sounds like your cup of gravy, I’ve posted some links below (including to the audiobook, which has a frankly ridiculous cast.) And I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reader reviews make an enormous difference to how a book succeeds (or fails), and so if you’re able to leave a few words – or even just a star rating – on sites like Amazon (which, in today’s world, is the one that apparently makes the biggest difference), I would be eternally, pathetically grateful.
Now back to writing the sequel…
The Cut Throat Trial is available at all good bookshops, and through the links below: