William landay author bio example

They were innocent, in a sense. Not naive, but innocent. As a writer - particularly as a crime writer searching for interesting new settings - that is a promising opportunity. Every writer draws on his various experiences, I think. My experiences stirred together the worlds of criminal law and the world of young families. The result is Defending Jacob.

In the book, it's not a spoiler to say that the Barber family, respected members of the community, are faced with the very real prospect of losing everything when their son Jacob is accused of a vicious crime. How accurate is the portrayal of their plight? Thankfully, I don't know. In my work as a prosecutor, I had virtually no contact with defendants' families.

William landay author bio example

Prosecutors do spend lots of time with victims and their families, obviously, but victimhood does not carry the same social stigma. Still, I remember looking across the courtroom at the defendants' families sitting in the front row of the spectators' gallery, particularly the parents. Some were belligerent, eyes narrowed, jaws firm; they defended their children to the hilt, never seemed to admit the slightest doubt about their son's innocence it was usually a son or the justice of releasing him back into the public.

Others were plainly suffering; their son was caught in the teeth of the criminal justice system and there was simply nothing they could do to help him. The plight of defendants' parents came home to me most vividly in a famous case prosecuted well after I'd left the DA's office. I won't name it here. In that case the defendant's parents were both lawyers, the mother a prosecutor, the father a criminal defense attorney.

Throughout a long trial that was splashed all over the newspapers and TV, these two lawyer-parents never spoke a word in public, never reacted to anything in court. They sat stone-faced, unwilling to give the jury or the media anything at all. Whatever their son might have done, it was impossible not to feel for them. Bad things do happen to good people, after all.

Defending Jacob explores the emerging science of behavioral genetics and neurocriminology - the notion that, as a predictor of criminal behavior, nature may indeed be as significant as nurture. Can you tell us about your research into this, the legal and ethical implications and what personal conclusions you came away with? I'm not a scientist, but I find this emerging science of "behavioral genetics" really fascinating.

Essentially the idea is that physical factors - very specific genetic mutations or malfunctioning of the brain - may create a biological tendency toward violence. This is cutting-edge stuff. We simply haven't had the tools to study these biological triggers for long. The effort to map the human genome began only twenty years ago and was completed less than ten years ago.

So we still have a lot to learn. Already it is clear that the implications for science and medicine are enormous and have been written about quite a bit. But we've heard less about what it might mean for law and crime. Partly that is because the science is still developing. It is one thing to identify a genetic mutation; it is a heck of a lot harder to establish a link between that mutation and people's actual behavior.

But I think we've also avoided the subject because it makes us so uncomfortable. We like to believe we can be anything we want to be. We like to believe we are independent, free-willed, masters of our own fate. The suggestion that we might be wrong - that we are hardwired to behave in certain ways, that nurture may play a larger role than we ever imagined - challenges a lot of assumptions we make about ourselves.

What if we are not free but fated - by genetic inheritance or by physical damage to our brains - to behave in violent ways? What if we have always favored the "nurture" side of the equation for the simple reason that we have never been able to study the "nature" side until now? The haunting idea of a "murder gene" or a "warrior gene" is particularly subversive in criminal cases.

The law generally presumes we are responsible for our own conduct. It presumes we decide to commit crimes. Defendants who cannot actually decide to misbehave - because they are insane or under age, most commonly - are considered less culpable. Is the "murder gene" a new category, a new exception to the general rule? Rather than "not guilty by reason of insanity," will we someday be saying "not guilty by reason of an inherited tendency to violence"?

To my knowledge, the "murder gene" defense has never worked in court in this country, though it has been offered in mitigation at sentencing. But in Italy last year, a man convicted of what would, in the U. It is important to keep all this in perspective. The phrase "murder gene" is shorthand. It is a convenient way of talking about a very complex subject.

But it is wrong to assume that anyone who inherits this gene will become a murderer or will become violent or aggressive at all. As the Barber family learns in Defending Jacob, there is no single cause of human behavior. Our actions are influenced by a thousand things. We are not robots, programmed to act in a few fixed and predictable ways.

Human behavior is the result of our genes and our environment both - nature and nurture - in an unfathomably complex interaction. It is important to remember that. But for futurists and novelists, think of the implications of behavioral genetics. What if we tested children for the "warrior gene" when they entered kindergarten? Should students who test positive be monitored or tracked differently, for the protection of their classmates?

Should the children of violent criminals be tested? Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info and giveaways by email. Join Member Login Patron Login. Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of ! Photo: Darlene Devita. William Landay. Books by this author. More about membership!

Interview In an in-depth interview, lawyer-turned-author William Landay discusses his courtroom thriller, Defending Jacob. Full Interview. Read-Alikes All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for William Landay but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed.

So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right. How we choose read-alikes. Steve Cavanagh Steve Cavanagh is an Irish author from Belfast and at the age eighteen he studied law by mistake. Nathan Filer Nathan Filer is a writer and a mental health nurse. I am a private person. That is one reason novel-writing appeals to me: Novelists — all storytellers — approach the world through misdirection, from oblique angles, through stories.

We come on like crabs, scuttling up to the truth sideways. A more direct, forthright sort of person would be writing essays or memoirs or some other form that addresses the world head-on. More important, I believe each novel has to stand on its own. The reader should not have to look outside the book cover for proof that it is convincing, moving, and authentic.

My books are the only credential that matters. Ideally, the reader should not be distracted at all by an ATA. So that is my ATA, I guess. After all, the power of novels is more intimate, more alive than their facts. Here is how it appears on the dust jacket of my new book, The Strangler: William Landay is the author of the highly acclaimed Mission Flats, which was awarded the John Creasey Dagger as the best debut crime novel of So, how should an author write his ATA?

How much to leave in, how much to leave out? William made a comment on "All That Is Mine" coming soon in paperback. Appreciate the kind words. Lynn wrote: "A wonderful book; thank you for your art! William rated a book it was amazing. Mildred Pierce by James M. Libra by Don DeLillo. Deliverance by James Dickey. William has read. Quotes by William Landay?

Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. Learn more. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind. See all William Landay's quotes ». Top 5 books listed below:. Defending Jacob by William Landay. The Silent Wife by A. Joyland by Stephen King.