"I want the truth.”
“You can't handle the truth.”
Who among us doesn't know which movie these lines are from!
The courtroom scene from the showdown between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson's characters in the 1992 movie A Few Good Men is one of the most quoted and memed movie scenes ever.
There's arguably no moment more suspenseful in literature or cinema than a trial with justice hanging in the balance, and the awful possibility of injustice triumphing. For my money, no jump scare, or shootout can ever trump a great courtroom scene.
From Tom Robinson’s murder trial in To Kill A Mockingbird to the trial in John Grisham’s legal thriller A Time To Kill, fictional trials provide almost unparalleled heart stopping drama without a a single shot being fired. The palpable surge of elation when good wins out, or tears and bitter disappointment when justice does not prevail, make courtroom dramas compelling reading or watching.
Among my favorite courtroom dramas is the 1957 movie Witness for The Prosecution. The suspense. The twist. The brilliant tactics of the defence lawyer, played by Charles Laughton. Or Spencer Tracey's fiery courtroom rhetoric in the film Inherit The Wind, about the 1925 Scopes 'Monkey' Trial which pitted Darwinism against Creationism but which was also a parable for McCarthyism, at its height when the film came out in 1960.
Or of course Gregory Peck's famous courtroom scene as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. The heart-wrenching consequences of that trial hung over the rest of the novel, and the film, like a dark shadow as it did the life of the young narrator of the story, Scout. .
Having watched, read and loved many of these movies and books, it was as if I'd been preparing to write about a trial all my life when I wrote the courtroom scenes for my thriller The Night Swim. The novel is about a true crime podcaster covering a rape trial in a small coastal town while investigating the mysterious drowning of a teenage girl decades earlier.
In preparation for the courtroom battle between the prosecutor Mitch Alkins and the defence lawyer Dale Quinn, I did plenty of research. I watched trials and talked to lawyers and judges and many others. I read transcripts and judgements from many different trials and I researched all sorts of details in the interests of accuracy. Then I wrote, and rewrote, those scenes until they were exactly as I’d seen them unfolding in my imagination when I first thought of the plot for the novel.
Research is important and it's one of my favorite parts of writing a novel. Although, too much research may be a double edged sword when it comes to writing a fictional trial. Writing suspenseful fiction often necessitates taking liberties with the truth. Real trials can be a snooze fest.
Sit in the public gallery in a real courtroom and you will be forced to endure excruciatingly long hours of listening to witnesses giving dry and repetitive testimony as well as plenty of hushed inside-baseball discussions on rules and legal technicalities.
There will be chairs squeaking, throats clearing and endless re-reading of transcripts in the echoey courtroom. But dramatic cross-examinations will be few and far between. In the fictional courtroom, days or even weeks of dry testimony are boiled down to a few dramatic moments. Lawyers can and do catch witnesses in lies in the most delicious ways. Watch Witness For The Prosecution for one of the best examples of this.
There’s a constant flow of clever repartee between sparring lawyers. Closing statements are filled with passionate rhetoric that move the courtroom to tears. Judges are irascible. Witnesses drop unexpected bombshells, or are broken under cross-examination. It’s rare in real life for a lawyer to break a witness on the stand and force him, or her to confess to being the real culprit as happens almost routinely in episodes of the long running TV show Law & Order and its spin-offs as well as many other legal dramas.
But it doesn't really matter because fictional trials might be a little loose with the facts but they often encapsulate the essence of the truth.
The Night Swim by Megan Goldin. Published by Mirror Books (Out Now)
Ever since her true-crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall has become a household name - and the last hope for people seeking justice. But she's used to being recognised for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help. The new season of Rachel's podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation - but the mysterious letters keep coming. Someone is following her, and she won't stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered - and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody in town wants to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases - and a revelation that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.
The Night Swim can be bought here.
Bio
Megan Goldin worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia. She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs. The Escape Room was her debut novel.
#TheNightSwim
No comments:
Post a Comment