I Usually Follow the Facts. This Time, They Led Me into Fiction.

My new courtroom thriller, The Witness We Prepared, is available now on Amazon.

Well, here we are—a new chapter in my writing life.

Most of you know me through my non-fiction: investigations into historical events, disasters, disputed decisions and the records people leave behind. My usual starting point is something I can check. A document. A date. A statement that needs a closer look.

For The Witness We Prepared, I started with a question.

What if a witness’s most convincing answer was never entirely her own?

That question stayed with me. Eventually, it needed characters, consequences and a story through which I could follow it.

In the Author’s Note, I explain it this way:

“A courtroom is built on the belief that the truth comes out if you ask the right questions. But what if the answers have been rehearsed?”

The story behind the question

Daniel Mercer is a barrister accustomed to helping frightened people face the courtroom. When he takes on the defence of Tom Bell, accused of murder, the evidence presents a dangerous combination: angry messages, a bloodstain and an eyewitness.

But the case also reaches into the past.

As Daniel examines what people remember, what they have said and how their accounts have taken shape, he must confront questions that reach beyond his client’s defence.

What interested me while writing was how much can turn on an apparently ordinary decision. A changed phrase. A tidied document. Something done at the end of a long day that other people must live with for years.

Those concerns will be familiar to readers of my non-fiction. Fiction has given me a different way to explore them—through people whose loyalties and consciences are tested as the story unfolds.

Available now

The Witness We Prepared is now available on Amazon.

If you enjoy courtroom drama, difficult moral choices and stories that ask you to look closely at the evidence, I hope it will find a place on your reading list.

Take a look on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HRJYZDCB?dplnkId=aba02b66-54f6-436f-bf9d-96324de8554e&nodl=1&th=1

Thank you for following my writing and supporting Stewart Independent Publishing Group. Whether you have been here since the earlier books or have only recently found me, I appreciate your company.

And if you read the novel, I’d be interested to hear what you make of Daniel Mercer.

As the final line of my Author’s Note says:

“Facts remain my first love. This time, the question led me into fiction.”

Bill