It’s always assumed that I base my novels on specific cases that I’ve worked on but the truth is that I’m more of a magpie, picking up an interesting fact of a case or a particular personality trait of a client and building my story from there.
I’m a defence lawyer and one day I was sitting at Inner London Crown Court waiting for my client’s case to be called on when a man, and what can only be described as his entourage, walked into the hallway and was joined shortly by his barrister. This man had a look of pure arrogance on his face and acted as if everyone was beneath him. I remember clearly thinking, who on earth is this man dressed in designer clothes and wearing expensive jewellery and what has he done? The barrister representing him told me that the ‘overdressed’ man was in fact a church pastor who had been charged with fraud and sexual assault. I was fascinated and immediately started thinking, what is his story and who is he really? The image of the pastor in court stuck in my head and then a few months later I was at another court and noticed that there were reporters and cameramen standing in the freezing cold outside the court building. Usually, the presence of the press means that someone famous is in court, but in this case, they were waiting for a family of seven who had been accused of murder after they’d attempted an exorcism on a family member. I was both horrified and intrigued and the strange thing was that from 2018-21 there were a large number of court cases where the defendants had been charged with serious assault offences which included manslaughter and murder after they’d attempted to perform exorcisms on family members.
I have family members who are Bishops and Reverends and they have all made it clear that they would advise any member of their church to obtain the help of mental health services if they claimed that a family member was suffering from demonic possession. It’s both disturbing and equally fascinating that anyone, in this day and age, could believe in demonic possession but take issue with a mental illness diagnosis.
I’m always interested in what motivates people to commit a crime and it was fascinating but also disturbing to learn that some people found it easier and more acceptable in their communities to say that their brother or sister was possessed instead of accepting that they were mentally unwell and needed help.
The Binding Room allowed me to explore how a detective would investigate the murder of a pastor and the difficulty in remaining objective when they’re constantly discovering disturbing facts about him. I felt that having a murder investigation that involved exorcisms would give me an opportunity to also discuss how different communities view mental health illness and the importance of discussing, without fear of ridicule, our own mental health.
Nadine Matheson has always been passionate about writing and storytelling. She was born and lives in London and is a Criminal Solicitor.
In 2016, she won the City University Crime Writing Competition and completed the Creative Writing (Crime/Thriller Novels) MA at City University of London with Distinction in 2018.
