Sunday, 2 March 2025

Amy Engle on writing I Did It For You

Before I became a full-time writer, I spent a decade working as a criminal defence attorney. It was rewarding, exhausting, heart-breaking work. I’m glad not to be practicing any longer, but I also feel lucky to have had the experiences I did during those years. They shaped me into a better, more empathetic person, one who is able to look past a stark black-and-white perspective and see all the subtle grey space in between the extremes. Given my background, writing a legal thriller might seem like the obvious choice, but so far setting a book inside a courtroom hasn’t appealed to me. But keeping the courtroom out of my novels doesn’t mean that each of my books isn’t informed by my time as a defence attorney, and I Did It For You is no exception. Every experience I had during those years as a defence attorney bleeds into my writing. The men and women I defended, most of whom weren’t horrible people, but simply people who had made a horrible choice. The system that is so blatantly stacked against defendants. The understanding that even people who have committed crimes often still have something worth contributing to the world.

When I sat down to write I Did It For You , there were two particular lessons I’d learned from my time as a defence attorney that I wanted to bring to the story. The first is the knowledge that most people who commit crimes are not simply evil, with no other facets to their personalities. Of course there are exceptions, true sociopaths whose humanity is almost impossible to find. But the vast majority of criminal defendants don’t fit the stereotype, so often portrayed in the media, of a monster with no redeeming qualities. During my years as a defence attorney, I never represented a single person whom I thought was beyond hope. They all had someone who loved them; they all loved someone in return; they cried, and laughed, and told stories. And many of them expressed remorse for the crimes they’d committed. I think there is a tendency to write off anyone convicted of a crime, especially a crime of violence. To assume such a person is disposable. But in doing so, we risk losing a bit of our own humanity in the process. It’s a hard thing to extend mercy, to do the work of recognizing someone’s humanity after they’ve done something terrible. But mercy is a gift we can offer that benefits both the giver and the receiver. It doesn’t take the place of punishment, which has a vital role in civilized society. But mercy can live alongside consequence. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. That idea, that someone can be both deserving of punishment and worthy of mercy, was something I wanted to explore in I Did It For You

The second issue I wanted to highlight with this book is the way we treat the families of criminals. During my years as a lawyer I worked on a variety of cases—embezzlement, health care fraud, drug trafficking, federal hate crimes, and one death penalty murder. When I began writing I Did It For You, I knew I wanted to include a death penalty strand within the story, because of all the cases I ever worked on, the death penalty trial sticks with me the most. It wasn’t just the grueling, relentless hours of work or the frustration with the way death penalty trials are conducted in this country. It wasn’t even knowing that a few exhausted, over-worked lawyers were all that stood between a man and death. I still vividly remember the moment the jury announced a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty. I watched my generally poker-faced colleagues burst into tears, all of us sobbing as we hugged one another and our client. But what I remember most clearly are the faces of our client’s family, the sheer relief that his life had been spared tempered with the knowledge that they would never again see him outside of prison walls.

In the years since that trial, it is those family members my thoughts have turned to again and again. They had done nothing wrong. Their only crime was raising and loving a man who would one day be involved in a criminal conspiracy that would end in murder. They weren’t guilty of any crime, but they were treated as an extension of the perpetrator, painted with the same broad brush. The family of the victim was treated with empathy and kindness, as they should have been. But the family of our client was looked at with scorn, their pain ignored by almost everyone in that courtroom. As if being related to someone on trial automatically meant their heartbreak wasn’t real or valid. When thinking about violent crime, we tend to only consider the victim and their family. But the family of the accused is, at best, forgotten and, at worst, branded as guilty along with the defendant. I think it is easier for us that way. Viewing people in black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, is so much simpler than diving into the nuances, of forcing ourselves to confront all the murky grayness of real life. And that is one of the ideas I wanted to explore in I Did It For You —the ways in which violent crime and the death penalty impact not only the family of the victim, but also the family of the perpetrator, who are so often overlooked or vilified.

Every time I write a book, my primary goal is to tell a good story. I want readers to be immersed in both the plot and the characters. But if, in the course of entertaining readers, I can also cause them to take a second look at an issue they may have avoided or never even given much thought to, then that’s a bonus. And I hope that’s what I’ve accomplished with I Did It For You

I Did It For You by Amy Engel is out in paperback now (HQ), £9.99.

Everything changed the night Eliza Dunning died. The residents of Ludlow turned on their neighbours, the Dunning family fractured, and Eliza’s sister Greer moved away, grieving and unconvinced by the police’s version of events. Now, fourteen years later, there has been another murder. It’s time for Greer to go home. But will she finally find the answers she has been searching for? Is it a copycat killer, or one that never went away?

More information about Amy Engle can be found on her website. Amy Engle can also be found on X @aenglewrites and on Instagram @amyengleauthor


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