South Australia

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Murder on Display

Submitted by Karen on

Category: 
Crime Fiction
Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Sub Genre: 
Police Procedural

As soon as the Flynn brothers lifted their Glocks, Dan was in trouble. Silence descended like a cloak of doom. No confusion crossed his mind... it was clear he wouild die in the next few seconds.

ISBN: 
9781481044561
Location: 
South Australia
Publisher: 
Createspace
Year of Publication: 
2012

DEAD BY FRIDAY - Derek Pedley

Author Information
Book Title: 
Dead by Friday
Author Name: 
Derek Pedley
Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Categorisation
Category: 
True Crime
Location: 
South Australia
Publisher Website: 
Dead by Friday - Amazon
Year of Publication: 
2013

A compelling portrait of murder for hire in the Australian suburbs, it begins when a dangerous sexual predator seduces her husband's sleazy boss.

Their obsessive affair leads to public sex and disturbing fantasies. Two mothers talk murder outside a primary school and suddenly down-payments are being made on contracts to kill.

From the Adelaide suburbs that spawned the Snowtown killers, enter the hitman, a man who eats speed for breakfast and murder contracts for lunch, on a sandwich.

Book Review: 

I'd never heard of the death of Carolyn Matthews until I found out about Derek Pedley's book DEAD BY FRIDAY. In one way, I wish I still hadn't as this has to be, without a doubt, one of the most pointless, selfish, stupid, idiotic, inexplicable and flat out unbelievable crimes from a city that seems to specialise in them. In another, it's been a succinct reminder for a reader of a lot of fictional crime that real life can beat the fictional for weirdness hands down.
 
(DISCLAIMER: I did generate the ebook version of this manuscript for Derek Pedley, with no obligation whatsoever to review the book). One of the bonuses of generating ebooks for authors is that you do get a bit of a sneak preview of books as you're going, although you don't get a chance to take in a lot of details. But there were snippets and bits and pieces of this book that kept catching my eye, and mostly, they tended to indicate that this really was one of the most pointless true crimes I've ever read about. And because of that it was particularly vicious. There was enough there to make me want to sit down and read DEAD BY FRIDAY properly, which I did, and in that reading most of the "players" in the plot to kill Carolyn Matthews don't exactly come across as rocket scientists, but to think that people who are as base, self-interested, nasty and disrespectful of others as this lot, are also capable of coupling together a plot, is breathtaking to be frank.
 
The book does an excellent job of outlining the circumstances that lead up to the murder, as well as the aftermath. It describes the impact that her pointless death had on her immediate family, in particular the three sons that were taken, on purpose, into the room to find their mother's body by a father who words just about defy description of. It outlines the sordid, tedious, icky behaviour of that father - Kevin Matthews, and his lover, Michelle Burgess and how Burgess manipulated so many fools of blokes into doing her bidding. It also provides some possible explanations, by way of a Forensic Psychologist, for the behaviour that Burgess, in particular, exhibited.
 
What it can't definitively explain, and what nobody can ever is why. Why on earth these two people ever believed they could get away with all of this. Why they just couldn't tread the path that most people would and take their sordid little sex affair off into an appropriate location somewhere and leave their families in peace. Surely they didn't really think that at the end of all of this they'd take the insurance money and walk off into the sunset....
 
This is not easy subject matter, which makes DEAD BY FRIDAY quite an achievement, because out of that sordid horribleness, Pedley has written a story which has a serious go at explaining the inexplicable.
 

Guns 'n' Rose

Submitted by Karen on

Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Category: 
Crime Fiction

A holiday in Terrigal sounded great to Les Norton, and all he needed to do was look after young Jimmy Rosewater for a week. But young and handsome Jimmy was supposed to be in gaol and, before he knew it, Norton was busy fighting off the usual yobbos. And all the time Les had a feeling Jimmy was up to something. He just had a feeling...

Sub Genre: 
Humour
ISBN: 
0330358510
Location: 
Country NSW
Sydney
South Australia
Series: 
Norton
Publisher: 
Harper Collins
Year of Publication: 
1996

Leaving Bondi

Submitted by Karen on

Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Category: 
Crime Fiction

Les figured by tossing $50,000 into the Gull's movie he'd become the next Sam Goldwyn. Only someone put a bomb on the film set. And who gets the blame? Now Norton's a fugitive from the law, desperate to prove his innocence. Satanists, drug dealers, nutty poets, blabbermouth disc jockeys - everybody between Sydney, the Blue Mountains and South Australia wants a piece of Les Norton. So what are Norton's chances of clearing his name and coming up smelling of roses? VFO. But rely on Les to come up smelling of something.

Sub Genre: 
Humour
ISBN: 
0732268710
Location: 
Country NSW
Sydney
South Australia
Series: 
Norton
Publisher: 
Harper Collins
Year of Publication: 
2000

KILLING FOR PLEASURE - Debi Marshall

Author Information
Book Title: 
Killing for Pleasure
Author Name: 
Debi Marshall
Author's Home Country: 
Australia
Categorisation
Category: 
True Crime
Location: 
Adelaide
South Australia
Publisher: 
Random House Australia
Year of Publication: 
2006

A disused bank vault holding eight dismembered bodies immersed in barrels of acid. Two bodies buried in a suburban backyard. A further two found in the bush.

Informed by material never seen before - an interview with Bunting's last lover Elizabeth Harvey, and with the Crown's key eye-witness James Vlassakis and with details of the torture and crimes not previously released - this is a tensely woven and microscopic examination of tawdry lives and tragic deaths.

Book Review: 

Quick comments, rather than a full review, but for those that aren't aware - this is a book about the notorious South Australian "Snowtown" killings.  There's only ever been a couple of other books that have taken me longer to read - KILLING FOR PLEASURE has been picked up, read a bit and put down since 2006.

Not because of the writing, or the analysis or even the nature of the crimes - this book covers one of those completely inexplicable, sad, pointless, horrible crimes that really did happen - as unlikely as that could possibly be.  It also attempts to look for some answers, albeit seemingly on the basis of the author's own research - there appears to be little by way of official explanations or consideration. Ultimately this was a very difficult book to read because this is real life and this is about the nature of a place and society that allowed twelve people (they know about) to disappear over seven years. 

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