Rather like the criminal cases he takes a professional role in, Birmingham barrister David Crigman doesn’t quite know how the books he writes will end up.

The eminent QC based at St Philips Chambers has just published his fourth novel, The Hangman’s Fracture, and it deals with murder – a subject he is more than familiar with.

One of the country’s leading criminal QCs, Mr Crigman has again put his many years of work at the criminal bar to a more imaginative use.

Called to the Bar in 1969 and taking Silk in 1989, Mr Crigman has worked on some of the country’s most serious and high profile trials and these days is involved almost entirely in murder cases.

Mr Crigman is confident it is his best book yet, although like all his previous novels he reveals it is a journey of discovery for the author, as well as the reader, a highly unusual approach when it comes to creating literary fiction.

“I never know what’s going to happen at the end,” he said. “I have an idea and an idea of the characters and how they develop but I never know what is going to happen.

“They bounce off each other and create their own momentum and the plot almost self-develops. A character has sparked off something another character has said and I see the direction it should take.

“I like that, particularly at the moment of discovery when I see where it is all going to go. It is quite a fulfilling experience.

“That offends against all the principles of writing. Agents say you have to have quite a structured synopsis so you know the direction it is going to take.”

And it is not the only unorthodox approach favoured by Mr Crigman, who admits to having a fascination for characters who have few if any redeeming features.

“They also say it is of paramount importance you have a central character that people like and that is nice,” he added.

“But my characters are extremely unpleasant and I think people get quite a degree of satisfaction of looking for the downfall of an unpleasant character.

“That too offends the principles on which most fashionable writers are told to operate.

“At a dinner recently held to mark the closure of Warwick Crown Court I was approached by a member of the judiciary who demanded to know why the characters in my books were so profoundly unpleasant.