Crime writer Eve Thomson wants readers to know this sobering truth about court cases

Detailed summary

Authors with prior legal experience have an advantage – but that doesn’t always mean they write with 100 per cent accuracy.

As a sometime crime novelist myself, I do my best to make sure the legal detail in my books is authentic, but authors who also work – or have worked – as lawyers have a bit of a jump on outsiders like me.

That said, readers probably expect more of them: their courtroom scenes must be true to life, their legal arguments plausible, and the professional lives of their characters depicted within the bounds of reasonable possibility.

Here, three women – two lawyers and a former one – share how their careers have influenced their writing.

“Obviously, when I read crime novels I get frustrated if the legal side of things isn’t right. The novels I love – including the non-crime ones – are those that you can see have been well-researched and you get that sense of truth.

At the end of each chapter in my book, Smother, I include a scene from a cross-examination, or an examination, of a witness. You get each character’s and each witness’s perspective, and then the judge’s ruling at the end. It allows the reader to play along and pretend that they’re a juror, and decide whether the conduct of each person is deserving of punishment or not.

I put a lot of work into trying to make those [scenes] correct and entertaining but it can be tricky to put forward a set of facts that hooks the reader but is also believable from a lawyer’s perspective. So they’re not going to be 100 per cent accurate.

I suspect some misapprehensions have come about from American television series, with lawyers walking around the courtroom and banging on the table in front of the judge – that would never happen in Australia.

And, probably, people think it’s a bit more exciting than it really is. Someone who’s watched American courtroom dramas – or even Australian courtroom dramas – might be horrified by the quagmire of procedural issues that happens before a case goes to trial.

It’s often the length of the process that takes its toll on individuals.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Age. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.