James Buckler on his inspiration for The Simple Truth

I was at work one day, day dreaming of new ways to kill people, as you do. It struck me that one of the big problems with writing crime novels is that all the best killing methods have already been used. Shooting, stabbing, strangling. All are too well used to have any profound impact anymore. I knew that I needed something brand new to kick start my second novel, The Simple Truth, in order to give the reader a real jolt in the opening pages. 

During my lunch hour that day, I was idly scrolling through a news site when my eyes were drawn to a story from the East Coast of America. A series of unusual deaths had occurred that had shocked the public. I can’t tell you exactly what the news report entailed in any more detail as I don’t want to spoil the narrative of The Simple Truth. Suffice to say, the story was really unusual in quite a disturbing way. This was something I hadn’t ever come across before, and believe me, as a crime writer I read about a lot of murder and death.

Secondly, I needed a hero. I had forbidden myself from creating a main character who was a police officer. I really like police procedurals but inherent in choosing to write about this world, a certain set of limitations are immediately placed on a book’s structure that restrict the choices the characters can make. Procedure has to take priority for the police officers’ actions to be believable. Hey, even maverick cops have to obey the rules sometimes. 

Instead, I decided that my hero was going to be a lawyer. This would grant the character an ability to investigate and probe the circumstances of any case, but still be able to improvise. I really like legal thrillers such as The Firm and The Lincoln Lawyer. I love the way they reveal people at their most vulnerable and unguarded whilst also showing the shady tactics that people employ to secure wealth and power. This allows the reader an insight into the motivations of a whole host of different characters from all walks of life. My wife is a lawyer, as are most of her friends, and subsequently I spend a lot of time around them, listening to their legal conversations, picking up juicy snippets of information I can use in my writing. One such topic of conversation was the current campaign against the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements. These confidentiality clauses are increasingly seen as an unfair tool that the rich and powerful use to protect themselves. I researched the misuse of NDAs and a story started to take shape in my mind and with it some more characters began to emerge in my imagination.

Now I needed a reason for at least one of the characters in the story to kill another. Bloodthirsty, I know, but without this any crime novel ends up being a bit limp. A crime story without a murder is like a football match without a ball – just a lot of pointless running around. So I needed a backdrop to the entire novel, an activity where the stakes are a matter of life and death. Something that people care about to such a degree that they would kill for it. Again, my salvation lay in reading newspapers. 

My interest had long been piqued by environmental issues and I was keeping tabs on the volatility in the international energy markets. This was back in 2019, way before the current craziness in the price of energy had made its way onto people’s actual household bills. It was apparent that a battle was going to be fought between fossil fuel companies and green energy developers. The financial stakes in this battle are frightening. Hundreds of billions of pounds will be won and lost in the struggle over how our future energy needs will be met. Lives will be changed in unimaginable ways. Technology that seems to come straight from science fiction will soon be mainstream. One of these new technologies is hydrogen energy. I began reading about the amazingly simple chemical process that turns water into hydrogen gas, a gas that can be used for almost anything. Hydrogen energy looks like the future – one that fossil fuel companies will do practically anything to stop becoming a reality. Would they even kill for it, I asked myself? With this, the story of The Simple Truth had fully emerged into the light.

The Simple Truth by James Buckler (Transworld Publishers) Out Now

A young woman is dead. A very wealthy client needs a favour. You're newly qualified as a lawyer and this could be your big break, so you jump at the chance. The case is about to be closed. All you have to do is talk to a family, ask them to sign some papers. How difficult could it be? Their daughter was found dead at a beauty spot on the outskirts of London in what you're told was a tragic suicide. Only you can uncover what really happened. But the truth is never that simple. And this case could cost you your life...

More information can be found on his website. James Buckler can also be found on Twitter and Instagram @Jamesbuckwriter

James Buckler on The Genesis for Last Stop Tokyo

LAST STOP TOKYO is my debut novel. It is the story of Alex Malloy, a young Londoner who runs away from a life changing accident to begin a new life in Tokyo. He promises himself he will avoid trouble in his new surroundings but it soon catches up with him. Within a few months he finds himself walking through Narita Airport with a holdall he is fearful of being stopped with. When a sniffer dog begins to approach, Alex sincerely regrets all the rash decisions that led him to that place.

They say you should write what you know and this part of the story happened to me. I had been offered a job teaching English in Tokyo. I was living in the USA and had spent the last few years working as a salesman, a carpenter and a phone marketer, whilst trying to find something worthwhile to do with my life. Now the work had dried up and I had accepted the offer to go to Tokyo and taken a flight out, via Vancouver. When I touched down at Narita, luckily, my baggage contained nothing more than clothes and a few books. On arrival, during my first few minutes in the country, I was whisked off by over-eager customs officials along a series of starkly lit corridors to an inspection room where a group of silent officers meticulously searched through my belongings. I was perfectly relaxed, knowing there was nothing for them to find, but, as I watched them, I thought how unbearable the tension would be for someone who was guilty. The knowledge that a long spell inside one of Tokyo’s notorious prisons awaited them would be excruciating. The first murmurs of a story began to awake in my mind.

A few months later, I was teaching at the school I worked at in Shinjuku, deep in the heart

of the city. I had a regular private lesson with a retired financier who spoke perfect English that needed no improvement but desperately wanted to have someone to talk to apart from his wife. One of his favourite ways to find a topic for discussion was to bring in the local English language newspaper that was printed for Tokyo’s expat community. He would flick through the pages and find a suitable article and we would spend two hours debating the finer points of the story. One day, he found an article about a visiting English businessman who had been arrested on suspicion of a minor theft. He had been held in custody for ten days without charge or access to legal advice while he protested his innocence to the police. I was surprised and told my student how this would be an abuse of power in the UK. He shrugged and told me it was perfectly normal in Japan, that the authorities had the right to hold anyone in custody for up to twenty-one days while they investigated a suspected crime. He told me that this system, daiyo kangoku or substitute prison, almost always resulted in the suspect’s confession, as it had done in this case. I suggested that perhaps the suspect had confessed because of the long period of custody; that to achieve a quick release, any normal person would be tempted to plead guilty and pay a fine just to go free. I asked him to consider not just how unjust that situation would be for a Japanese citizen, but how daunting that would be to a foreigner, a gaijin, either visiting or living in Tokyo.

As I spoke, the flash of inspiration I experienced was like something from a comic book. I could see a thread running from the story of the wrongly incarcerated, Western businessman to my experience of being searched at airport customs in Narita. I knew straight away I had the foundation of my story. I went home that night and began writing the opening page. The result is LAST STOP TOKYO.

Last Stop Tokyo by James Buckler (Transworld Publisher Limited)

The funny thing with suffering is just when you think you've suffered enough, you realize it's only the beginning. Alex thought running away would make everything better. Six thousand miles from the mistakes he's made and the people he's hurt, Tokyo seems like the perfect escape. A new life, a new Alex. The bright lights and dark corners of this alien and fascinating city intoxicate him, and he finds himself transfixed by this country, which feels like a puzzle that no one can quite explain. And when Alex meets the enigmatic and alluring Naoko, the peace he sought slips ever further from his grasp. After all, trust is just betrayal waiting to happen and Alex is about to find out that there's no such thing as rock bottom. There's always the chance it'll get worse . . .

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