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Blogs by Joseph Amiel
How Do You Write a Good Legal Thriller? 11/12/2012 8:47:59 AM
The people are what's important in a legal thriller; the murder trial is the inexorable peril confronting them.
Having just published A QUESTION OF PROOF, I have some experience with legal thrillers that have twists and turns, and being a lawyer by training, I probably have a leg up on legal intricacies. Peril is the essential ingredient for any thriller, and an all-powerful legal system's punishment is a fearsome form of peril. But I believe the legal thriller is only effective if it focuses on the people enmeshed in the legal system, say in a murder trial with the verdict being the inexorable peril confronting them.
In my novel A QUESTION OF PROOF, the last mystery is not resolved until the last sentence. Susan Boelter is suspected of murdering her newspaper-publisher husband, who was divorcing her and seeking to take everything from her, including custody of their thirteen-year-old daughter. She asks Dan Lazar, a renowned criminal defense attorney, to defend her. But he faces two obstacles to taking on her defense: He is about to lose his license to practice law due to trumped-up charges of witness tampering in an earlier case; and, more important, he and Susan are lovers. The legal system provides the hurdles and dangers, but it is only the means for exploring the acts, motives and relationships of the people trapped within it.
I did not want the traditional ending in which everything resolved when it appears the mystery has been revealed, another Perry Mason clone. In A QUESTION OF PROOF, the end of the trial is only the beginning of the search for the truth. The story remains unresolved until the very last sentence, but that sentence relates to Susan and Dan and their relationship, not to a legal outcome. I trusted that if I could make readers care about Susan and Dan and their relationship, they would be engrossed until that last sentence.
