Justice is something that has always been important to me.
When my sister and I were children, we were both incredibly aware of what was fair. Whenever my father travelled abroad and brought us presents, we always alternated who got to choose first. One trip I got to choose first, and the next trip my sister did. It was a simple thing, but it mattered to us because we both wanted everything to be fair.
That feeling—that sense of fairness and justice—has stayed with me throughout my life. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it has also found its way into my stories.
For example, in Being Killian, Anisha, the main character, is treated incredibly unfairly. By the end of the story, though, she gets a kind of poetic justice. And I like that. It feels right to me.
I remember reading a mystery novel once. One of the things I enjoy about mystery stories is that they often have a moral balance. The person who has done something wrong shouldn’t come out ahead. They don’t necessarily have to be punished by the legal system, but there should be consequences for their actions.
In this particular novel, that didn’t happen.
The criminal stole an unborn child, killing the mother in the process. I expected her to be caught eventually, or at least for the child to be returned to the family. Instead, she escaped abroad and raised the child as her own.
To me, that wasn’t justice.
In fact, I haven’t read another book by that author since.
Now, justice isn’t equally important in every genre. It’s probably more central to mysteries than it is to fantasy or science fiction. Stories can absolutely end with some questions unanswered.
But in most of my own books, you’ll find some form of justice by the end. It isn’t always legal justice, and it isn’t always exactly what the characters were hoping for. More often than not, it’s poetic justice. The people who deserve a second chance get one. The people who have treated others badly usually don’t walk away completely unscathed.
That’s simply the kind of stories I like to tell.
What about you? Do you think justice is important in stories? And if it is, what kind of justice do you like to see?