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©Louise Ross |
Earlier this year, I finished writing my first novel, Hawk’s Justice
(publishing with Simon & Schuster on 5th November 2026). New writers are
usually given the same advice: write what you know. I practised as a barrister
in the courts of England and Wales for twenty years, so the legal world was an
obvious choice for my setting. I know legal London well, especially the area
around the Royal Courts of Justice and the Temple.
Harder to draw from my own experience was the plot. My legal career was
serious, even boring. I practised in banking and finance law rather than crime,
so I didn’t have much of a ready stock of past cases or real-life courtroom
dramas to draw from. Instead, I turned to the stories I enjoyed throughout my
childhood: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple. Murder mysteries were
my favourite, but I realised that forensic science had moved on a fair bit from
the times in which those period pieces were set. Was it still realistic to
write a whodunnit or locked room mystery in the modern world of DNA and
computer science without stretching the reader’s credulity beyond breaking
point?
It was whilst researching modern crime investigation techniques that I
discovered something that genuinely surprised me: we are currently living in
what is probably the safest period in human history. The homicide rate recorded
by police in England and Wales last year was the lowest in decades. North of
the border, homicides have fallen to the lowest level since modern records
began. Police Scotland was established as the single national force in 2013 and
claims to have solved every murder they have investigated since that time.
That’s a 100% clear-up rate! This figure seems to be based on the fact that
Police Scotland believe they have correctly identified the person responsible
for every murder investigated during their history, not that they have
sucessfully prosecuted every murderer, but it is still a remarkable statistic. As
a British observer, the higher levels of lethal violence in the US have always
been concerning to me – but even in America, the homicide rate is currently the
lowest since national estimates began.
Why are these figures so surprising? Perhaps it’s because they’re
counterintuitive to anyone who consumes a modern diet of news and social media.
The traditional newsroom maxim ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ will probably never
die. From an evolutionary perspective, we’re instinctively predisposed to focus
our attention on anything that could constitute a threat. That’s why we can’t
help but rubberneck when we pass road traffic accidents. It’s also why
finely-tuned online algorithms will keep filling our feeds with crime stories
even if the true story of our age is that serious crime has never been lower.
In some ways, the absence of serious crime in our everyday lives could
even be seen as giving rise to a perverse appetite for such content – hence the
explosion in popularity of the ‘true crime’ genre in podcasts and online
streaming platforms in recent years.
Where does all this leave the murder mystery novel? The genre’s
traditional inciting incident – the discovery of an unexplained dead body – is
still capable of capturing the modern reader’s attention. But attention spans
are shorter than they used to be. The key challenge for today’s writer is to
keep the reader engaged notwithstanding the temptations of social media and
online streaming platforms. That’s where the mystery part comes in. We can’t
compete with the tragedies of real life, which will always be more salient and
diverting by reason of the fact that they are real. However, novelists
certainly can compete when it comes to the twists and turns of a good mystery,
especially when unexplained deaths are becoming less common in the real world.
I’ve always found that the ‘whodunnit’ aspect of a murder mystery is the
most engaging of all – stories where the reader can travel along with the
detective and try to solve the mystery at the same time. That’s what I did with
Hawk’s Justice – a man is found dead in the Royal Courts of Justice in
mysterious circumstances, and the reader is presented with a series of
plausible suspects and clues that will enable them to try to solve the murder
themselves whilst watching the protagonist navigate a series of exciting pitfalls
along the way.
There is something important missing from the above analysis of a murder
mystery. Of course, the ‘murder’ attracts the reader’s initial attention, and
the ‘mystery’ should keep them engaged. But the true appeal of crime fiction isn’t
the crime as such – it’s the restoration of order. The initial crime
temporarily rips a hole in the fabric of a community, and it’s the detective’s
job to stitch things back together by finding the murderer and bringing them to
justice.
The concept of ‘justice’ being at stake can feel nebulous in the
abstract, but in the specific context of a murder mystery it becomes more
concrete. In Hawk’s Justice, the victim is a High Court judge, with the result
that the justice system itself is under threat throughout the book. In this
way, I’ve tried to raise the stakes to the highest possible level, whilst
wrapping the murder mystery in a legal thriller to keep the reader turning the
pages along the way.
The modern world feels increasingly chaotic and uncertain. Few people
would say that there is much justice in the world of politics or international
affairs. But a good murder mystery novel can provide a sense of justice being
done, the feeling of a satisfying resolution. That is something a bottomless
online feed will never provide.
Hawk’s Justice by Jim Ross (Simon & Schuster) Published 5th
November 2026
A killer in the courts. When High Court judge William Ryland is found
dead inside the Royal Courts of Justice, it seems like a tragic accident. But
young, high-flying lawyer Tom Hawk suspects there's more to his death than
meets the eye. When he takes over Ryland’s final case – a battle between two
Russian billionaires – he’s thrust into a murky world of deception, where
nothing is quite as it seems... An international conspiracy. Inside the courts,
the body count begins to rise. And as evidence disappears, Hawk finds himself
wrapped up in a much darker game: one that goes to the very heart of the
justice system. A man who breaks the rules. When tensions arise between Hawk
and the beautiful but uncompromising Detective Inspector Kate Black, he
realises that he’ll have to take the law into his own hands – but at what
cost? Murder and intrigue combine in this fast-paced adventure, set against the
iconic landscape of legal London
More information about Jim Ross and his books can be found on his website. He can also be found on Facebook and on Instagram @jimrossauthor.
