Please join us for a Q&A with James Lasdun, the author of The Family Man. James will be stopping by from May 18 through May 20 to answer your questions.
Please join me in welcoming James Lasdun to the BookBrowse Community Forum.
James was born in London and now lives in the US. He has published novels, a memoir, collections of poetry, books of short stories, and is the recipient of the 2026 Katherine Anne Porter Award, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His New Yorker article on the Murdaugh case, The Corrupt World Behind the Murdaugh Murders, was the magazineâs most widely read article in 2023. With the director Jonathan Nossiter he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgaard. He is an Executive Producer on the HBO series DTF St Louis, which was inspired by his New Yorker article, My Dentistâs Murder Trial: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/my-dentists-murder-trial
His work has been widely translated and won many awards, including an O. Henry Award and the inaugural BBC National Short Story Award. He has been a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, the LA Times Book Prize and the Writers Prize (formerly the Rathbones Folio Prize). His first novel, The Horned Man, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Seven Lies, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Jamesâ latest book, The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh, is an âimmersive account of a seemingly loving fatherâs transformation into a âfamily annihilator.ââ Published on May 5, 2026, the work was featured as a BookBrowse First Impressions selection earlier in the year, and received rave reviews from our members.
Please use this space to ask James questions about his work. As a reminder, to reply to an existing comment, click the grey Reply on the right side under the comment. To ask a new question, click the blue Reply button a little lower down.
James: Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with us. Is there anything youâd like to add to the bio above before we jump into the Q&A?
Thanks so much for inviting me! Nothing to add to the bio at the moment, though Iâm happy to answer any questions.
Congratulations on the publication of your book, THE FAMILY MAN, which hit the shelves earlier this month. I know it started as an article for The New Yorker. How did it evolve into a full book?
Thanks! I actually wrote a second article for the New Yorker (online) about the trial itself, but even then I felt Iâd only scratched the surface of this truly perplexing story. Above all I didnât feel that I or anyone else had come close to understanding who Alex Murdaugh really was. In order for me to accept that someone not obviously âcrazyâ could murder his apparently beloved son (the killing of spouses is unfortunately not an unusual crime), simply to stave off exposure on his embezzlements, I needed to grasp both the internal and external processes that led to it. The book is primarily an attempt to do that.
After writing the book, do you feel like you do actually understand how Murdaugh became a âfamily annihilator,â or does your opinion continue to change, even now?
I have to admit that while I think he was responsible one way or another, Iâm still not personally 100% convinced he pulled the triggers.
Would you say, then, that you started compiling your research into a book for your own peace of mind, or did you feel early on that a full-length book could be a marketable project?
And what was the process like to get it published?
I read, loved, and reviewed your book. Now that Murdaugh is granted another trial, do you plan on continuing the saga or are you finished with the story?
Iâd never looked into the literature on family annihilators before writing the book. There isnât very much, but itâs certainly illuminating - as much for how Murdaugh differs from most of them as the obvious resemblances (for one thing almost all of them kill - or attempt to kill - themselves as well as their families). So in that sense (along with my better understanding of sociopathic behavior, much of which tends to involve forgery and embezzlement), I do feel I understand his psychology a little better. But for me (maybe because Iâm primarily a novelist) it was hearing him talk and looking very closely at the decisions he made long before the murders, that really began to open him up as a knowable human being.
Interesting that youâre not 100% convinced he pulled the trigger. Iâm not either (probably about 95%). I ran my alternative scenario from the book by Mark Tinsley and he wasnât able to fault it (not that he agreed with it either - but he did acknowledge that it was consistent with all the known facts).
It came totally out of my own continued interest, though I wouldnât have been able to do it without a contract. By then there were already lots of other books out or in the works (not to mention TV shows), but my publisher, Norton, believed I had interesting perspectives to offer. I have a longstanding relationship with them, so it was a fairly straightforward process of putting together an outline and talking to my editor, Jill Bialosky, who was enthusiastic from the start.
Thank you so much - deeply appreciated! I am actually writing a follow-up article right now, and I certainly intend to stay on the story for the duration.
Well, I guess Iâm somewhere around 80%. The thing I keep coming back to is Alexâs 911 call, where he says something to the effect that Paul shouldnât have gotten involved (going by memory here, canât find the exact quote in the book at the moment). That, combined with the timing on Maggieâs iPhone wake-ups, does make me wonder if there was someone else involved. But, heck, what do I know, LOL.
Youâve spent an amazing amount of time studying this crime. What did your family think of your involvement?
If Iâm remembering correctly, you were already involved in researching the project when you found out that HBO and Netflix had begun interviewing people for their own videos on the subject. What ran through your mind when you found out about their interest? Did it impact the way you chose to write your articles, and, ultimately, the book?
And also, did your experience as a fiction writer influence how you approached this project at all?
James let first say I was thoroughly taken by your book. You gave the readers food for thought. I have one question and that is now that the courts of declare his trial to be unfair. Do you agree and what effect do you think it will have on your bookâs popularity?
Ha! Good question - spending 2-3 years on a guy who murders his apparently beloved wife and son as a way of getting himself out of a tight corner, I did wonder if my own beloved wife and son (and daughter) were ever disturbed⌠If they were they never showed it. They were always totally supportive and in fact my wife was instrumental in getting me to go back and talk to Cousin Eddie after Padgett Powell and fled on our previous, ignominious attempt!
The comment about Paul on the 911 call does seem very significant, but it would have to be forensically confirmed by an acoustics expert to have any real weight. The timing on the raise-to-wake is more puzzling, in my opinion and does tilt in Alexâs favor.
I found out about HBO and Netflix as soon as I flew down to SC for my first New Yorker piece. It brought home how big the story had already become, but it didnât really trouble me. I knew that whatever I was trying to do would be something more personal, more about trying to figure the internal things out for myself than just lay out the puzzle pieces in the most sensational way possible. I generally love true crime docs (though I have to say I donât think either of those were great), but that wasnât what I was trying to do, in book form, so I never felt in competition.
My experience writing fiction was crucial to my approach. With a novel you have to be able to follow your character from the inside completely as they go from A to B to C (or I do), and I took that approach with Alex Murdaugh. There was a huge gap, for me, between his alleged motive (the âgathering stormâ) and the actual act of killing his family. I made it my task to understand how that gap was crossed - psychologically, emotionally, etcetera - in as much detail as I could. At the same time I didnât want to âfictionalizeâ in any way, which meant having to base every claim or conjecture I made about his thought processes on hard evidence. This was both the main challenge and - for me - the main pleasure of writing the book.
Thank you so much! I do think the reversal of the verdict was the right decision. Not because I think Alex is innocent but because Due Process is crucial for any credible justice system and there was blatant jury tampering in this case. Without it there would almost certainly have been a hung jury, so Murdaughâs Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial was clearly violated. I wrote about the tampering in my book, and made my feelings about it pretty clear so I donât think it makes much difference on that front. The timing was helpful in terms of publicity. Some people may decide to wait for another book that includes the retrial, but so far I get the feeling more people want to understand the story right now. Iâd be curious to know what you think? I may write a new section for the paperback, depending on when the retrial is scheduled. Weâll seeâŚ