From Non-Fiction to Legal Thriller by S J Fleet

Authenticity in fiction is tricky. That has been perhaps my biggest takeaway from the transition between non-fiction polemic and legal thriller. When I first started sketching my idea for The Cut Throat Trial, I identified authenticity as my lodestar. I wanted to show readers the criminal justice system as it really is, through the eyes of the people directly involved, rather than as a Hollywood screenwriter or tabloid editor imagines it to be. There is so much truth about the human condition played out in our criminal courts each day that tacking closely to reality would, I figured, create a far more gripping story and compelling cast of characters than anything I could invent. More truth in fiction than non-fiction, and all that.

I wanted readers to be able to breathe in the sticky, airless hum of our dilapidated court buildings. To feel the gentle buzz of the robing room, as egomaniacal barristers who, moments ago, were tearing chunks out of each other in court, take off their wigs and laugh uproariously. To reach out and touch the tension that mounts as an untruthful witness is led, by a series of carefully calibrated questions, to the climax of a cross-examination in which the implausibility of their evidence is laid bare. And to be exposed to perhaps the most enticing and fascinating dimension: the complexity. Not of the law, but of the people; contrary to popular renderings, this is not a world of heroes and villains, neatly divided into opposing camps. Every facet of human life and behaviour, every outward emotion and hidden motivation, runs through the heart of the cases that come before the courts, and extracting an easily-identifiable truth is all-but-impossible. 

A better laboratory for a thrilling novel you would struggle to find. And it would be easy, surely? This, after all, is literally my life as a criminal barrister. Up to 70 hours a week. This should, I smugly told myself as I leaned back at my desk to take a swig of tepid mint tea, write itself.

Well. 

Reality swiftly, unwelcomely, kicked down the door and entered the party. Because while criminal justice is, for all of those reasons above, utterly gripping, the trial process can be – as any juror will testify – tooth-bendingly dull. Parts of that – the delay, the frustrations at the inefficiency of the system – I wanted to capture. But I absolutely didn’t intend for readers to actually feel like jurors in a waiting room, hanging around listlessly for hours just waiting for something to happen. Even inside the courtroom, even in a murder trial where everybody is pointing the finger at each other, there are elements – the legal arguments, the dense science, the playing of hours of mostly-uneventful CCTV, the hundreds of pages of documentary evidence – which are less than exhilarating. My first draft actually encompassed many of these. I opted to include transcripts, tables and charts, legal documents – every hallmark of a genuine trial. And, it’s probably fair to say, the book was in parts unreadable. Necessary as they may be in the real world, they did not, I had to concede, need trouble a reader hoping to be entertained.

The characters posed a different, but equally unhappy, problem. The temptation not simply to base characters on the people I have met, but to incorporate them fully-formed, was, in the planning stages, almost impossible to resist. But they are so real and interesting! I kept grumbling to myself as I scrubbed out another lifted line of dialogue, conscious that, as much as anything, easily recognisable characters pose a fatal risk to an anonymous author’s anonymity. Eventually, after much reworking, I managed to forge what I hope are convincing and compelling amalgams, blends of multiple people I have encountered with a liberal lashing of fantasy.  

But striking that balance has taken time. More than I, in my naivety, had appreciated. Writing about what you know is not, it turns out, easy. 

So what I am left with – what now stands as my debut foray into fiction – is, I hope, realistic and authentic, even with my concessions to artistic licence. My modified rule has become not to remorselessly replicate reality, but to allow myself anything that would not cause me, as a reader, to ruin my partner’s evening by superciliously explaining How Very Wrong This All Is. 

It's still a high bar. But I hope I have just about cleared it. If not, I’m sure I will hear about it in the robing room…

The Cut Throat Trial by S. J. Fleet aka The Secret Barrister will be published on 28 August 2025 (Picador) in hardback, ebook and audio. 

It is one of the biggest trials of the year. Three seventeen-year-old boys are accused of the brutal murder of an elderly teacher on New Year's Eve. Each boy denies it. Each points the finger at the other two. But they can’t all be innocent. The three defence barristers have only one job: to persuade the jury that their client is not guilty. But they’re up against a prosecutor who needs to win the case, no matter the cost. Because when the game is murder, the competition is deadly.

You can follow S J Fleet on X @SJFleetAuthor