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Jo Murray on Dissection of a Murder
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
Rejection letters and a question about juriesThe book did not begin at a desk. It began with a stack of turndowns from employers who decided a former barrister was too specialized for casual work. That experience of being locked out forced her to ask what she actually knew how to do, and the answer pointed back to the courtroom.
I couldn’t have written Dissection of a Murder if I wasn’t a barrister. It relies so heavily on having an intimate knowledge of how evidence and procedure work in criminal trials. I also think that after defending so many criminals, you are well-qualified to write a thriller because you know how they get away with offences and how they get caught!
Once she had committed to writing, she needed a question at the centre of the book that her years in practice had never quite resolved. Juries were the part of the courtroom she could watch but never reach: she would study them from across the room and wonder how the same facts landed differently depending on who was framing them.
I have always been fascinated with the criminal jury and how we, as advocates, present evidence to them in a trial. I wanted to examine whether it was possible for a barrister to manipulate a jury by twisting information to serve their own agenda.
The silent defendant Jack, whose backstory the novel gradually assembles, came from her habit during client conferences of tracing the chain of events that had brought someone to the dock. In those meetings she was less interested in what a person had done than in the moment the course was set.
at what point did you learn that violence was an acceptable way to solve conflict, or what was going on at home to make you feel like the criminal gang you hung around with was more like a family than your own? [paraphrased from audio]
That question, repeated across years of client conferences, became the engine behind Jack’s character and the book’s wider argument about what actually brings someone to a courtroom.
How she wrote it
Planning the plot like a case fileShe brought a barrister’s preparation habits directly into her drafting process. The novel’s second half is a full trial, and she treated her plotting the same way she would have treated the evidence bundle before going to court.
I planned the book like it was a trial. No stone was left unturned and I approached each plot strand from different angles to ensure I had covered everything. My legal training helped with the plotting here!
The planning phase is the longer of her two stages: every character is fully developed and every scene plotted before a first draft begins. What that means in practice is that the writing itself, once it starts, moves quickly because the structural decisions are already settled.
I wanted to examine the opposite, quieter way in which women self-destruct, which can be equally as damaging, but it originates from an obsessive need for control. [paraphrased from audio]
She also wanted the novel to trace the origin of that need, showing readers not just Leila’s behavior but the conditions that produced it, so the control reads as consequence rather than character flaw.
Writing the opposing barrister gave her access to a style of advocacy she had consciously avoided in her own career. Her real courtroom method was the inverse of blunt aggression, and she described the contrast in a Q&A when asked how much of herself she put into the characters.
lead you down the garden path, be really nice to you, and then drop you in it before you’ve had time to realise what’s going on. [paraphrased from audio]
Durham, where much of the novel is set, was chosen for what it holds in tension: centuries of legal tradition on one side and an atmosphere that turns unsettling once the city empties at night. Newcastle Crown Court on the Quayside, a building she knew from her own years in practice, also features.
Durham was a perfect setting for the book as it perfectly mirrors the archaic and respected traditions of the Bar, but there is an unsettling undertone after nightfall which I love.
Accessibility was a structural goal from the start. She wanted readers who had never set foot in a courtroom to follow the journey from arrest to verdict without feeling lost or talked down to, which shaped both the pacing and the amount of legal explanation she wove into the narrative.
I effectively wanted to take readers on a journey all the way from arrest to trial verdict in a way that wasn’t daunting or filled with legal jargon. People are fascinated with our legal system, and I wanted readers to learn about it in a way that was accessible without feeling patronising.
The personal thread
What the Bar taught her about being underestimatedBefore she could defend anyone, she had to survive an institution that read her background, her gender, and her accent as disqualifying. She entered a profession that had historically defined itself against exactly what she was, and she stayed long enough to become good at it.
As a blonde, working-class woman from Teesside with an accent, people make all kinds of assumptions about you. Usually, that assumption is you’re not very bright or you’re a bit of a bimbo. In the elite, male-dominated world of the Bar, I had that quite a lot.
That experience of being systematically underread is not incidental to the novel. Leila, the protagonist and barrister at the centre of the case, operates in the same institution, and the way she manages perception is one of the book’s running concerns.
What she wants us to sit with
The verdict the reader has to reach aloneShe has described the structure of the novel as a deliberate replication of the jury’s position. Every piece of evidence Leila handles, the reader handles alongside her, arriving at the final chapter having made the same journey a jury would make, with no judge to guide the conclusion.
Ultimately, the reader becomes the jury in this story.
The discomfort she wants readers to feel at the end is not incidental. She has said the final chapter is designed to leave the question of justice open rather than resolve it, and that the open ending is the point.
I hope this book sparks a debate about what exactly brings criminals to the courtroom, and I hope it gets people talking about what justice really means. This book should force people to assess their moral compass, and they should feel uncomfortable after reading that last chapter.