The letter of the law – Kate Helm on the true crime shows and legal dramas that inspired her debut thriller

As a kid, I always loved the ideaof becoming a barrister -  the drama, the gowns and most of all, the life-or-death speeches! I was always a nerdy girl, obsessed with crime and the justice system – aged 7, I often wrote about big news stories while my classmates were writing cheerier accounts of what they did in their holidays…

 In the end, the baffling, Hogwarts-style barrister training route scared me so much that I opted for journalism instead. But I did end up in court as a reporter, covering trials and inquests where lives were changed and deaths analysed – before working on investigations at the BBC. 

 So when I had the idea of writing a thriller with a damaged courtroom sketch artist as the central character, it seemed like the perfect way to put decades of fascination with legal drama and cold cases to good use. Georgia Sage is convinced most criminals she draws are guilty – till she realises she might have helped convict the wrong person of murder. 

So here are the dramas – real life and fictional – that shaped me as a thriller writer!

1.         Ladykillers: Lucky, Lucky 13 This 1980 drama about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged for murder in England, was probably not the ideal viewing for the 11-year-old me, but it made a huge impact. That’s partly due to the hypnotic performance by Georgina Hale – but it also made me think in depth about capital punishment for the first time. 

2.         The Crucible – we studied Arthur Miller’s 1953 play about the Salem witch trials at school. The impossible catch-22 faced by those accused of it – to ‘confess’ and incriminate friends, or deny and face death – was brought to life in a draughty Cheshire classroom. And, for a future writer, it also raised huge questions about persecution and freedom of speech. 

3.         The Police: A Complaint of Rape - My parents put my foot down and wouldn’t let me watch this documentary when it was first broadcast in 1982, but I saw the media furore that followed. The terrible way Reading detectives treated a woman victim brought huge changes to the system. A few years later, as a very junior reporter, I interviewed a rape victim at Reading Police Station who had been asked by the much-improved team to appeal for help with finding her attacker. It had a profound effect on me…

4.         …As did the 1988 movie The Accused, starring Jodie Foster. This, too, was ground-breaking in looking at attitudes to sexual assault and ‘blame’ especially with women who didn’t fit a stereotype. One of the cases in my book, The Secrets You Hide, reflects the fact that it’s still very hard to get a conviction.

5.         Crown Court: This Granada series was a pioneering daytime show where a fictional case would be presented to a jury made up of members of the public – before asking them to give their verdict. It was my not-guilty pleasure if I managed to wangle a day off sick from school. There were 300 cases in all between 1972 and 1985– the list on Wikipedia makes for fascinating and unsettlingreading (some of the titles would not be acceptable now!). 

6.         Rumpole of the Bailey: another childhood treat, featuring the eccentric rebel, Horace Rumpole, this drama had plenty of comedy too. Even though Rumpole couldn’t have been more different to me – I was a schoolgirl, he was a grumpy old barrister – he was an irresistible hero and I loved his way with words and sense of justice. 

7.         World in Action & Rough Justice: the work of these two pioneering investigative TV shows changed the lives of those wrongly convicted. As a teenager, when I was weighing up journalism vs. law, these programmes showed journalists could make a difference. Years later, I was lucky enough to work with many of the WIA and Rough Justice veterans in TV current affairs – and I learned that it is relentless attention to the tiniest details, that can bring about the right verdict, even decades after the original trial.

8.         North Square: set in a Leeds chambers, Peter Moffatt’s TV drama was the forerunner of Silk but I think I prefer North Square, which was a bit more rough and ready, and featured two of my favourite actors: the irresistible Rupert Penry-Jones and the brilliant Phil Davis.

9.         Evil Genius – the true story of America’s most diabolical bank heist – this jaw-dropping Netflix series is absolute proof that truth is way, way stranger than fiction. Tragic and grotesque, with no definite answers... 

10.       The Prosecutors: this documentary series shows the behind-the-scenes work passion that goes into bringing a case to trial – and how personal it becomes to the Crown Prosecution Service lawyers involved. The underfunded CPS gets a bashing but the individuals working there can be relentless and passionate and bring families much-needed closure. 

For writers and readers, the law is the ultimate demonstration of the power of words, stories and reason.  And if my determined and disturbed heroine gives a little insight into the work of those who fight for justice, then I will be a very happy author indeed…

The Secrets You Hide is published in paperback on February 7. Join Kate’s free book club for exclusive previews and competitions to win signed books by your favourite thriller authors, via Kate’s website www.kate-harrison.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @katewritesbooks

What Makes Me Write asks Peter Murphy

I’m Peter Murphy.  My day job, from which I’m now retired, was in the law, as an advocate, teacher, and judge.  I worked in England, the United States, and for a decade as counsel at the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.  I began writing fiction seriously more than twenty years ago, partly as an antidote to the legal writing that consumed so much of my life, but I’ve only been published in fiction in the last six years.  I’ve published five legal thrillers set in Sixties and Seventies London, featuring barrister Ben Schroeder: A Higher Duty; A Matter for the Jury; And is there Honey still for Tea?; The Heirs of Owain Glyndŵr; and Calling down the Storm.  I’ve also published two political thrillers about the US presidency: Removal; and Test of Resolve.  More recently, I’ve completed a volume of humorous short stories, under the title Walden of Bermondsey.  My publisher is No Exit Press.  

My parents told me that I’d learned to write the alphabet and a few odd words before I went to school.  When I was a bit older, I remember boring one or two baby-sitters by making them read short stories I’d scribbled on a page or two of paper.  In other words, for whatever reason, I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve always loved language.  When I became a lawyer there was ample opportunity to write, as part of my practice and also academically.  I have been widely published on legal topics.  But when I was in my forties, I found that technical writing wasn’t enough. I wanted to write fiction, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.  The novel was a natural form for me, because I’ve always loved to read novels, both older writers like Henry James and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and contemporary novelists.

The first novel I completed was the first in the Ben Schroeder series, A Higher Duty.  I was teaching at a law school in the United States at that time.  It was by working on this novel that I learned most of what I know about writing novels.  But it wasn’t the first to be published.  After re-working it endlessly, as it seemed, and getting equally endless rejection letters from agents, I changed direction with Removal, a political thriller about the American presidency.  When I eventually returned to England in 2007, a chance encounter with Clem Chambers (creator of the excellent Jim Evans series) led me to No Exit Press. They liked Removal.  After Removal had been published, we started the Ben Schroeder series with A Higher Duty. The moral of this is: never give up, however many rejection letters you get.

When I retired from the law in 2015 I was able to become a full-time writer.  I’ve suddenly entered the world of literary festivals and library events – and blogs, which are something of a mystery to many of my generation, myself included.  I enjoy writing just as much as ever.  I’ve recently tried my hand at humorous short stories. I’ve always loved John Mortimer’s books and the great TV series starring Leo McKern.  My Walden of Bermondsey is an unashamed homage to Rumpole.  It is based partly on experiences I myself had as a lawyer and judge, and partly on imagining what Rumpole would have been like as a judge. 

I am often asked what it takes to write a novel, and how to go about it.  I’m never quite sure how to answer that question.  But I have put together a few pages of notes on the subject, which anyone interested can download from the home page of my website. 

The basic principles, it seems me, are:

1.   You must really want to do it (it’s a very laborious and time-and-energy-consuming process);

2.   You must have a story, or combination of stories, strong enough to keep the reader engaged for 300-400 pages;

3.   You must do your research and prepare a detailed synopsis of the book before starting to write.

4.   Then all you have to do is to sit down and write the book (harder than it sounds).  If you have a good synopsis, this should be a mechanical process of writing each scene as well as you can.  You shouldn’t be having ‘writer’s block’ or sitting around waiting for the ‘muse’ to descend. If you do experience this, your research or synopsis isn’t good enough.  Go back and work on it again.

5.   Never show your work to anyone until it’s finished.  This is controversial – there are many flourishing writer’s groups bearing witness to the opposite idea. It’s just my own experience talking.  With A Higher Duty, I showed the developing text to a number of people, and got so many conflicting comments and suggestions that I ended up feeling that I had to scrap what I had and start again.  Others have different experiences, and I’m not saying that my way works for everyone.

6.   But this is important: don’t revise the book until you’re well over half way through.  If you try to revise too soon, you may have to change back again and you may upset the stability of your synopsis, and if that goes wrong, you’re back to square one.

7.   Finally, don’t worry if you’re not sure how the book ends.  I was at least 75% through Removal before my heroine, FBI Agent Kelly Smith, told me how she would end it.

Calling Down the Storm by Peter Murphy (Published by No Exit Press) Out 29th June.

Calling Down the Storm is the story of two separate but strangely parallel lives: the life of a defendant on trial for murder, and the life of the judge who presides over his trial.  April 1971. When DI Webb and DS Raymond receive an emergency call, a horrific scene awaits them. Susan Lang is lying on the ground, bleeding to death. Her husband Henry is sitting nearby, holding a large, blood-stained knife. In shock, Henry claims to have no memory of the events that led to his wife's death, leaving his barrister, Ben Schroeder, little to defend a potential charge of murder.  Unknown to his strict Baptist wife, Deborah, Mr Justice Conrad Rainer has a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. In his desperation for money, he has already raided his own and Deborah's resources, and now he has crossed another line - one from which there is no return.  To his horror, as the trial of Henry Lang starts, Conrad discovers a sinister connection between it and his gambling debts, one that will cause his world to unravel.