The actor Philip Glenister (Life
on Mars and Mad Dogs) advised his daughter: ‘If you want to be an actor and
earn some money, become a barrister.’
With the state of legal aid, most
criminal barristers would question the wisdom of that advice. It does however
highlight the close links between acting and the law. Many barristers would
like to make the opposite journey and be treading the boards in the West End.
A trial is rather like a play. We
wear our costumes. We perform to the audience. And on a good day no one gets
murdered.
That is the tag line for my new
novel, A Trial in Three Acts, where the worlds of the theatre and law collide.
An actress is murdered live on stage, her head chopped off with a guillotine.
Suspicion falls on all cast members, but it is her ex-husband, Hollywood
superstar Leo Lusk, who is charged with her murder. At his Old Bailey trial, he
is defended by English barrister Charles Konig KC, and New York trial lawyer
Yara Ortiz. They realise that the clues to the murder lie in the play itself,
and that to save their client they need to identify the real murderer.
When, more than thirty years ago,
I started out as a barrister, I thought that winning cases was about persuading
the judge that you were right on the law. Over time, and particularly after I
became a KC, I began to realise that the law has very little to do with the
outcome of most trials. In truth barristers win cases by telling the judge a
better story than the other side. Every trial is a one-off performance for an
audience of one. Judges are human, and you win by showing the judge why they
should want to decide in your client’s favour. To borrow from the US legal
philosopher Jerome Frank, laws are merely the formal clothes in which judges
dress up their decisions.
So, to be a good barrister you
need to be a good actor: to be able to put on a performance, to convince the
judge that you believe that your client is in the right.
Of course, there are differences
between the stage and the courtroom. As barristers we cannot make things up; we
have to work with the facts that we are given. And unlike theatre, there is no
script. A trial is an improv performance where the underlying material is
constantly changing. It is a play where your fellow ‘cast members’ (the
witnesses, the judge, your own client) can suddenly start wandering off in
unexpected directions or making up their own lines. I have seen trials lost
with a single bad answer in cross-examination.
It was a film adaptation of an
Agatha Christie play that inspired me to become a barrister: Witness for the
Prosecution, starring Charles Loughton and Marlene Dietrich. I remember being
transfixed by the skill with which Loughton, as the defence QC, held
centre-stage in court, moulding the jury to his will. I wanted to do the same.
Little did I realise that it was Loughton who was actually being manipulated by
Dietrich.
An excellent new production of
the play in London has blurred the lines between theatre and law. It is set as
though in a courtroom, and members of the audience get to sit in the jury box
and decide the fate of the accused. It is very cleverly done.
In writing A Trial in Three Acts
I have tried to achieve a similar blurring of the lines between theatre and
courtroom: my homage to the Queen of Crime. And like Christie, I have provided
readers will all the same clues as are available to Charles Konig KC – buried,
of course, amongst a multitude of red herrings. The book contains a number of
scenes from the play in which the murder takes place. Study these scenes carefully,
and you may spot the solution.
I will provide one further clue.
Charles Konig KC solves the crime not by identifying the murderer, but by
working out how the murder was carried out. Readers can do the same.
Happy hunting. Break a leg.
A Trial in Three Acts by Guy
Morpuss (Viper Books) Out Now
A trial is rather like a play. We
wear our costumes. We perform to the audience. And on a good day no-one gets
murdered. Six nights a week the cast of the smash-hit play Daughter of the
Revolution performs to a sold-out audience. A thrilling story of forbidden
marriage and a secret love child, the critics say it'll run for years. That is
until one night the third act ends not in applause but in death, when leading
lady Alexandra Dyce is beheaded live on stage. Every cast member has a motive,
but it is the dead woman's co-star - and ex-husband - Hollywood legend Leo Lusk
who is charged with the crime. When defence barrister Charles Konig is brought
in last minute, he knows this ought to be the case of a lifetime. But Charles
would rather be on his holiday trekking up K2, and he isn't interested in
celebrities, especially ones that seem to be mysteriously trying to derail
their own defence. But as he and his co-counsel New York lawyer Yara Ortiz sift
through the evidence, it becomes clear that clues may lie in the play itself.
And that Charles's only chance of victory is to identify the real murderer...
More information about the author and his books can be found on his website. He can also be found on 'X' @guymorpuss.
