Legal eagle Olly takes a leaf out of his own book
A CRIMINAL defence barrister says that creating his latest novel has been his most demanding assignment yet.
Olly Jarvis has just published The Genesis Inquiry, a thriller featuring a burnt-out but brilliant lawyer as the central character – and it has already received praise from Stephen Fry.
Olly – who from his base in Manchester’s Exchange Chambers is engaged in some of the most highprofile criminal cases in the country – acknowledges that creating the story was a challenging task.
Until his latest book, the 54-yearold has drawn on his particular understanding of the pressures and excitement of life in the English criminal courtroom.
His debut novel Death By Dangerous was nominated for a crime fiction award in 2016. He went on to write the acclaimed Jack Kowalski series, set in Manchester and featuring fictional M.E.N. reporter Jim Smith.
But he says that by comparison to The Genesis Inquiry, those earlier works were comparatively straightforward.
He said: “What I used to do was get up at 5am and try to do a couple of hours before work and work weekends.
“But with this book it was so utterly absorbing and the threads were so important that I took off blocks of time to write it.
“So I had to have very understanding clerks and instructing solicitors and I sort of wrote it in chunks.
“The first draft – this isn’t writing every day of course – took me 18 months. And then there was another 18 months of finessing and just re-editing.”
The newly-published book has already been well received with Stephen Fry describing it as a ‘compulsively readable crime and legal thriller.’
And that praise is in keeping with how all his works have been received so far.
Olly said: “When someone does a review and says they like the book, there’s just nothing like it.”
West Londoner Olly, a son of renowned actor Martin Jarvis and brother to Toby, the composer who wrote the theme to TV’s Love Island, found his way to Manchester in 1993 as he advanced his legal career.
He said: “I stayed because I just love Manchester, avoiding having to go on the Tube and sit in traffic jams and I love the people of the north so I stayed.”
Despite the stress of his legal work, he said: “I enjoy being a barrister. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that it’s incredibly challenging. But it’s also very rewarding to be part of the machinery of justice in this country, which I really believe in.”