Behind the Book: Nothing But the Truth

Avi writes:

Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Part of the answer is, in very odd ways.

Consider Nothing but the Truth. I like games. One day, while wandering about a flea market I chanced upon a game unlike any I had seen before: a boxed mystery game. When I opened the box it contained all the evidence of a crime in separate, replicated pieces. Here was a photograph. Here was a police report. Here was (in a little packet) a cigarette stub. Here was a written statement by a witness. And so on. You (like a detective) were supposed to sift through all this very real looking evidence—the legal term for evidence is “discovery”—and then decide who the villain was before opening a sealed envelope. Very clever.

Then, at another flea market, I came upon the same game in a completely different form. Here, all that discovery was reproduced as a book. Now you went through that evidence by turning pages. It was not like any book I had ever seen. It fascinated me.

Now, if you look at the way Nothing but the Truth is constructed, and think of it as a game, with each section like the evidence for a crime, you’ll see the connection between my book and that mystery game.

And guess what? When I was first started on the book the working title I used was, Discovery.