Courtroom Theatrics by Guy Morpuss

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.

Ghosts, Shipwrecks and Murder by Guy Morpuss

 

Vancouver Island is a land of ghosts and shipwrecks.

Hauntings abound: the woman in a white ballgown seen on the stairs at Craigdarroch Castle; a crying girl who floats out to sea each morning; Kanaka Pete, a murderer hanged at Gallows Point, whose restless spirit wanders the beaches at dusk.

The western coast of the island is known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Hundreds of ships have been wrecked in its treacherous waters, and countless lives lost.

The wreck of the Valencia, in January 1906, was one of the most tragic. En route from San Francisco to Seattle in bad weather, her captain overshot the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and struck a reef near Pachena Bay. As the ship slowly sank, a hundred metres offshore, the screams of the women and children could be heard over the sound of the rain and the wind. Only a handful of men survived.

Months later, a local fisherman found a lifeboat containing eight skeletons in a sea-cave next to the bay, the mouth of the cave blocked by a large boulder. There were also several reports of a lifeboat seen on the open sea, rowed by a crew of skeletons.

In late 2019 I had just returned from a trip to Vancouver Island, and my agent was about to put my first novel, Five Minds, out on submission to publishers. He asked me for an idea for a second novel that he could pitch at the same time. I was sitting at my desk with a blank piece of paper on which – for reasons that escape me – I had written a single word: ‘undelete’. As I wracked my brain this turned into an idea for a crime novel: a police officer trying to solve a murder in an isolated community where some members could unwind time. How would it work if whenever they got close to identifying the murderer someone turned back the clock?

For me the three most important parts of a novel are a clever plot, characters the readers want to spend time with, and an interesting location.

I had a plot; the characters would develop as I wrote; so I needed a location.

Vancouver Island has a stark beauty; it is isolated from the world, and frequently battered by fierce storms sweeping in off the Pacific Ocean. It seemed the perfect setting for a classic murder mystery: a group of people trapped in a remote mansion by bad weather, one of them murdered, and one of them a killer.

A friend of mine who comes from the island told me about Black Lake, near Pachena Bay, and the famously tragic shipwreck that had occurred there.

So Black Lake Manor starts with a shipwreck inspired by the story of the Valencia. Mine takes place a hundred years earlier. What follows also draws on the rich mythology of the local First Nations people.

In Black Lake Manor a single lifeboat escapes the sinking of the Pride of Whitby in 1804, but the survivors find themselves trapped in a cave. Only one escapes alive, having survived by eating the flesh of his companions. He is rescued by the Mowachaht, the local First Nations people, who realise that he has been visited by an island spirit and acquired a unique ability, which his descendants will share: once in their lives they can turn back time by six hours.

Two hundred and forty years later, when the locals close ranks around a possible murderer, this presents real problems for the investigating officer. Each time she has almost solved the murder she has to start again, with no recollection of what she discovered last time round – and each time her investigation goes off in a different direction. So, unusually, the reader knows more than the protagonist. But which of her possible solutions is the correct one?

Black Lake Manor features cannibalism, live heart removal, a chess set (which may or may not be a red herring), and a pet octopus.

It draws heavily on its location: the incredible beauty and harshness of the island; and the dark mythology of its people. I hope that I have done justice to it, and perhaps even will inspire some readers to visit the Graveyard of the Pacific.

Black Lake Manor by Guy Morpuss (Profile Books) Out Now

A locked room. A brutal murder. And a killer who can unwind time… In the former mining town of Black Lake, there is an old story about a shipwreck with only one survivor. His descendants have a unique ability: once in their lives – and only once – they can unwind the events of the previous six hours. More than two hundred years later, part-time police constable Ella Manning is attending a party at Black Lake Manor, the cliff-top mansion belonging to the local billionaire. When a raging storm sweeps in from the Pacific, she and several other guests find themselves trapped. And when their host is discovered brutally murdered in his study the next morning, the door locked from the inside, they turn to her to solve the crime. Pushing her detective skills to the limit, against the odds Ella is sure she has identified the killer… but then someone undoes time. With no memory of what she discovered before, her investigation begins again, with very different results. Which of her suspects is guilty? And is there something even more sinister she is yet to uncover? Can she solve the mystery before time runs out… again?