GIDEON HAIGH A Scandal in Bohemia: The life and death of Mollie Dean. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
In exploring the death – and life – of Mollie Dean, Gideon Haigh covers a lot of fascinating ground. A young woman walks home after a Melbourne theatre performance, making a phone call to a friend along the way. Then, metres from her front door, she is...
CHRIS JOHNSTON and ROSIE JONES The Family. Reviewed by Lou Mentor
The Family is a chilling account of how a cult arose that would leave a legacy of damage in its wake. What is true? What is false? In the quest for enlightenment what does it take to convince regular – often well-educated – members of society to abandon the norms of...
Crime Scene: MARTIN MCKENZIE-MURRAY A Murder Without Motive: The killing of Rebecca Ryle. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
A Murder Without Motive is an intriguing and compelling true crime with much to say about the Australian suburbs and the national psyche. Martin McKenzie-Murray, the Saturday Paper’s chief correspondent, has written a gripping true crime story about a murder that...
Crime Scene: HELEN GARNER This House of Grief: The story of a murder trial. Reviewed by Lou Murphy
Questions of masculinity and notions of guilt and innocence are probed in Helen Garner’s disquieting examination of the tragic death of three young boys and the murder trial of their father. Most Australians will be familiar with the high-profile case at the...Crime Scene: JUDITH RODRIGUEZ The Hanging of Minnie Thwaites. Reviewed by Paula Grunseit
The real-life hanging of a 19th-century baby-farmer inspired award-winning poet Judith Rodriguez to tell the story in a variety of literary forms. I am Minnie Thwaites. I am under Melbourne. Wherever lime goes, where it seeps, where the sour juices of the city are...Crime Scene: MICHAEL DUFFY Call Me Cruel. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This true crime account attempts to explain the mind of a manipulative killer. It’s a cliché, but in this case it’s apt; if you came across a scenario like this in crime fiction you’d be hard pressed to stop your eyes from rolling. As is often the...Crime Scene: JOANNE DRAYTON The Search for Anne Perry: The Hidden Life of a Bestselling Crime Writer. Reviewed by Paula Grunseit
Crime novelist Anne Perry began her life as Juliet Hulme, who in 1954 was convicted of murder. Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson’s eerie film about the Parker-Hulme murder (starring Kate Winslet) is not easily forgotten. Set in 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand, it...The Godfather: Peter Corris on Publishing Non-fiction
Mad Dog: William Cyril Moxley and the Moorebank Killings is the first non-fiction book (not counting a few ‘as told to’ autobiographies and some co-edited anthologies) since my history of prize fighting in Australia, Lords of the Ring, in 1980. All fiction in between....RICHARD HALL The Mr Asia Connection: The True Story of Underbelly’s Terry Clark. Reviewed by LInda Funnell
Why watch Underbelly when this factual account of the 1970s Kiwi-led drug empire is so gripping? Richard Hall’s The Mr Asia Connection (originally published as Greed: the Mr Asia Connection in 1981) traces the rise of Terry Clark from small-time, small-town boy in New...
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