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Speaker 1: This is jem Nation with jon Z.

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Speaker 2: How impressive is the LinkedIn profile of our next guest?

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Speaker 2: From corporate to corporate lawyer to criminal lawyer to standup comedian,

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Speaker 2: radio broadcaster, author. He's well of experience makes him the

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Speaker 2: ultimate writer and storyteller. He's written stacks of books, but

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Speaker 2: his latest, one, Criminal, is a novel that draws some

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Speaker 2: comparisons from his own life. James O.

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Speaker 1: Lachlan, how are you, Amanda Good? Hi?

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Speaker 3: Jensy, Hi there, James? Could I just start the ball rolling?

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Speaker 3: Has anyone got anything worthwhile out of LinkedIn?

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Speaker 2: As far as like I was judging about LinkedIn, I

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Speaker 2: don't know if I find.

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Speaker 3: It's the biggest time wasters brigade I've ever been a

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Speaker 3: part of.

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Speaker 1: I think it's like the opposite of Twitter.

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Speaker 4: Twitter's everyone being mean to each other and LinkedIn is

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Speaker 4: going that's fabulous, Well done, You're fabulous.

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Speaker 1: No, your fabulouist.

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Speaker 2: That's why we don't like it.

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Speaker 3: It's a colab central.

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Speaker 2: Well look, let's talk about your new book, Criminals. How

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Speaker 2: much have you relied on your past experience to write this?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: I was a legal aid lawyer working at Blacktown Local

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Speaker 4: Court in the nineties. And I went to a private

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Speaker 4: school in Canberra and was a corporate lawyer and hated it.

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Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, I walk into Blacktown

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Speaker 4: Court and have to represent all these people who I

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Speaker 4: don't even know existed. And at the time, I thought,

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Speaker 4: these are really confronting and interesting experience and a lot

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Speaker 4: of people, you know, would ask me lots of questions

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Speaker 4: about it.

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Speaker 1: So I thought there was stuff there.

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Speaker 4: I could write a crime novel, not from the point

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Speaker 4: of view the good guys, but from the point of

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Speaker 4: view of the criminals and kind to try and work

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Speaker 4: out how whether they're different from us and you know,

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Speaker 4: there's a big line between us and them, or alternatively,

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Speaker 4: maybe we're all a bit of both, and maybe it's

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Speaker 4: a little bit of circumstances.

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Speaker 1: And you know, if I.

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Speaker 4: Didn't grow up in a private school in Cameberra, but

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Speaker 4: I grew up in some of the backgrounds some of

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Speaker 4: my heroin addicted clients, how would I be and how

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Speaker 4: would they have gone in my background?

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Speaker 1: So I wanted to explore all that.

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Speaker 3: And being a defense lawyer, I've always when you've got

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Speaker 3: a guy there and you know that he's guilty, but

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Speaker 3: you've got to defend him. So is that where you

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Speaker 3: find how you can defend that person? You said, where

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Speaker 3: you came from a bad home, he's on heroin. Is

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Speaker 3: that how you justify that?

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Speaker 4: Well, the first part of it is normally, if the

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Speaker 4: case against them really strong, you say you should think

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Speaker 4: about pledding guilty and they go, no, mate, never done it.

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Speaker 4: And you go, well, they got you on CCTV and

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Speaker 4: they go, yeah, no, they would have spliced that together

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Speaker 4: and faked it. And then you go, you know, if

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Speaker 4: you play guilty, you get about a quarter off your sentence,

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Speaker 4: and they go, yeah, well, yeah, just get over from

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Speaker 4: time with plag guilty. So the first part is often

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Speaker 4: giving them the sensible advice to pled guilty, and then

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Speaker 4: you try and tell their story, and it often is

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Speaker 4: a tragic and sad rather than bad story.

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Speaker 1: There are many criminal masterminds out there.

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Speaker 4: There's maybe a few, but the fastority of people who've

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Speaker 4: had horrible backgrounds, who've taken heroin as a painkiller and

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Speaker 4: financing their habit through you know, breaking into breaking into

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Speaker 4: people's homes. So if you can get them to address

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Speaker 4: the underlying cause, the addiction, which you know in the book,

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Speaker 4: we've kind of explored. Then's code for them, but also

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Speaker 4: good for society because crime go sound.

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Speaker 2: And when you came to write the story, did you

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Speaker 2: find a storyline from one of your actual cases? Change

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Speaker 2: the names?

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Speaker 4: Actually, well, a number of conglomerations of them. So I

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Speaker 4: represent a lot of people like my character Dean Young

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Speaker 4: blokes on Heroin breaking into houses, and he tries to

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Speaker 4: one job of robbing a club in Blacktown, you know,

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Speaker 4: to get a whole chunk of money, but realizes that

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Speaker 4: if you do that, the cops are going to pay

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Speaker 4: more interest than breaking into someone's house. I also, Madam,

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Speaker 4: this was really interesting to me. A lot of people

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Speaker 4: like my character Mary, middle aged women who had no

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Speaker 4: financial need to feel but shoplifted like minor things like

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Speaker 4: pens and lipsticks, and it was a real thing. Everyone

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Speaker 4: knew about it and not uncommon, and it was because

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Speaker 4: they were depressed, the theory went, and they just wanted

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Speaker 4: to feel something, feel the thrill of transgressing across the line.

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Speaker 4: As my character Mary says, I've tried self help and

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Speaker 4: it doesn't help. So I've got a character like her,

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Speaker 4: And then I've got a cop too, because I worked

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Speaker 4: with a lot of police and I always admired the

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Speaker 4: work they did. I've got a cop on Stressley who,

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Speaker 4: like all cops, has had to make hundreds of decisions

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Speaker 4: and has got one wrong with big consequences and kind

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Speaker 4: of wanted to see where that took her.

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Speaker 3: I love this sounds great your theory, Amanda, that a

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Speaker 3: woman over fifty can rob a bank, because.

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Speaker 2: There was a study that showed this. They recreated a

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Speaker 2: bank robbery and asked the people thought it was an

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Speaker 2: actual one, and at the end they said, no, it wasn't.

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Speaker 2: We want you to tell us what you saw and

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Speaker 2: had to write down what they saw, and everyone ignored

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Speaker 2: the middle aged woman. So if you want to commit

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Speaker 2: a crime, be a middle aged woman.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Wow, that's really interesting. And you know, all those women

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Speaker 4: who did do those minor shoplifting things, it was a

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Speaker 4: cry for help and they wanted to get caught because

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Speaker 4: that would force them to kind of, you know, address

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Speaker 4: their underlying unhappiness. So now I met, you know, dozens

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Speaker 4: of them over my years as a legal age slister.

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Speaker 1: And they weren't they weren't. They were nice people, you

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Speaker 1: know what I mean.

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Speaker 4: They were just in a really bad place. And once

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Speaker 4: they started getting the appropriate help they get better. So

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Speaker 4: we call them criminals because they break the law. But

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Speaker 4: where's the line.

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Speaker 3: Really, there's a new book about Amanda. You'd be like

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Speaker 3: the next Italian job, the Invisible Woman, because you already

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Speaker 3: you already drive on footpaths when you're in your card

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Speaker 3: aged So, James, this could be a sequel to Criminals. James,

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Speaker 3: thank you for joining us. It's out now, Criminals. You

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Speaker 3: can buy it in all good bookstores and online jobs

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Speaker 3: on lacklum.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Great to talk to you. Thanks for having

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Speaker 1: me too.