Author Chats
C. A. Hiddleston’s Legal Thriller Tells a Cautionary Tale About Corruption
January 21, 2022
In Duly Noted the D.C. Bar continues its author Q&A series featuring members who have published works in a variety of genres.
C. A. Hiddleston’s recently published novel, The Court Watchers, follows the prosecution of a public defender for the murder of a junior district attorney with whom he was carrying on a secret affair. The story’s twisting series of revelations, and its cast of corrupt public officials, private investigators, and hired thugs, call to mind the pulp novels of the late 20th century, with their scandalous subject matter and trenchant social commentary.
How did your professional experiences contribute to your novel?
I was a prosecutor for seven and a half years and a defense attorney for a lot longer than that, so I’m able to see both sides of things. It helped, as a defense attorney, to know where a prosecutor is going or how they think. Prosecutors tend to see things in patterns. Of course, as a defense attorney you think about your individual client and their story.
In death penalty cases, in particular, you hone in on the individual[’s] story and try to present that to the jury so that they can understand your client and why they acted the way they did. Working on these kinds of cases, I got more interested in stories and fiction. When I wrote The Court Watchers, I had all these snippets in my mind and observations from over the years. You gather your experiences and want to make sense of them, especially when you are near the end of your career.
Your book is full of colorful characters and dramatic events. Where do you draw inspiration from?
My characters are a mosaic of different things. Some details are drawn from personal experience, especially the speaking style of characters, mannerisms, and personality. Imagination takes over pretty quickly, however, and actual life is typically just a springboard from which the story proceeds.
The themes in The Court Watchers came from real-world observations and concerns. Fiction gives people an excuse to read about killing, corruption, and power grabs, without the reader having to admit all these things are true around them or are becoming true. Half the job of fiction is dramatic entertainment.
With Judge Parcheesian, a character in The Court Watchers, there is increasing ambition and associations with like-minded manipulators. It’s haunting. This charismatic man even starts convincing his fellow judges to take off the black robe of impartiality and to wear a deep peacock blue, representing their brand of justice favoring the elite.
As the story goes along, the characters take on a life of their own and I lose control, and they speak and act according to their own personalities. Maybe they have a transformative moment at the end.
Alongside the contemporary concerns central to the novel, there are several references to the past, sometimes going back to ancient history. How are today’s concerns related to the distant past?
I believe history moves in cycles, repeats, or at least rhymes. In the past, America had the Gilded Age [when] railroads and oil resources were controlled by monopolistic men. President Teddy Roosevelt put an end to it. We can do the same now. The late republican era of ancient Rome is an apt comparison to what we are becoming now. Was January 6 meant to get people used to the idea of what is to come? Is this what people really want? Did we already have our own Julius Caesar in Donald Trump? Will a sophisticated autocrat such as Augustus Caesar follow? If President Biden fails, maybe a Trump successor like Nikki Haley comes along, or someone else who can make autocracy more palatable to the American people. Does the historic trend track us exactly? It’s pretty close.
John of Cappadocia, the administrator or chief of staff under the Emperor Justinian, excelled in corruption like no other. According to historian Edward Gibbon, John had a “native genius” and “his aspiring fortune was raised on the ruin of cities … and his style was scarcely legible.” Does that sound familiar?
Your novel leaves some conflicts unresolved. Will your next book continue to follow this one’s characters or strike out into new territory?
Several friends who read The Court Watchers say they want a sequel. They cannot accept the ending. I think the sequel will play out within the American government. Watch for it.
I have completed a manuscript for my next novel called The World of Mitch Zhukov, the Man Who Accepted Everything, a story about a theoretical physicist who discovers the secrets of the universe and learns to accept the love of his family. Political intrigue comes out near the end, however, as governments are always interested in secrets.
Where can readers find your work?
The Court Watchers is available on Amazon.com or Apple Books. You can find my law review articles through Google Scholar, particularly one I wrote for the University of La Verne, proposing [anti-]corruption courts. We need specialized corruption courts, similar to drug courts, where the offenders go see the judge once a week, are closely monitored by probation officers, and either rehabilitate or go to prison. Corruption is difficult to root out, especially when widespread and deeply established. Using a team approach with a therapeutic model, you encourage people to change.
