The human cost: ‘The Mushroom Tapes’ by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein
The subtitle of this book sums up the authors’ intent: Conversations on a Triple-Murder Trial.
It’s not a blow-by-blow of the whole trial, nor of the crime itself. That sort of true-crime writing is not really my cup of tea, nor is it the kind of approach that the three authors are, rightly, famous for.
Rather, it’s a collaborative exploration of their personal responses to what they see, hear and think during this very famous trial in Victoria’s Gippsland region in 2025.
Especially, it is an examination of the very significant toll on those involved: the human side of the headlines, the speculation, the theories. The crime is only the first part of a process that affects every individual who is somehow connected to a trial like this.
I probably would not have been inclined to read this book, except that the three women who wrote it are authors whose previous works I have admired. They tackle their subjects with respect, humility and a very honest vulnerability. These qualities are reflected in this, a collection of conversations they had together while driving and from to the small town where the trial was held, and in between hearing days.
The result is not a forensic examination of the evidence, or the legal arguments, so much as how all of this made them feel – about the accused, about the victims, about the residents of a little country town that will be forever changed. The legal teams, the journalists covering the trial. The families of the dead.
They debate long and hard about their reasons for wanting to attend and write about this particular trial. Are they, in the end, like those who see it as an opportunity to make a quick buck from a book, podcast or film? Are they just curious sticky-beaks wanting a vicarious glimpse into unimaginable trauma? They share their thoughts about those reasons; here is part of their answer:
Helen: Basically what we’re doing is bearing witness…We’re bearing witness to a rent in the social fabric and how the law is going to deal with it.
Sarah: You can do two things with [evidence in a trial]. You can digest it into content that people come to ogle out of shadenfreude, or you can say ‘Oh God, I know that feeling…I know what shame is, and I know what rage is,and I know what it is to be islolated and desperate.’
ebook pp 23-24 of 249Of course mushrooms feature throughout, death cap mushrooms being the medium by which the killer delivered the poison to her victims. The authors muse on the ways in which mushrooms could be seen as metaphors: for indications of personality, relationships, intent. This book also had me thinking about fungi in general and its place in our environment.
I love the way these women write, and I loved ‘hearing’ their voices throughout this book: unadorned, unedited, honest.
The Mushroom Tapes is unlike any ‘true-crime’ book I’ve come across previously. In their exploration of this particular trial and the crime that brought it about, the authors have much to say about us all.The Mushroom Tapes was published by Text Publishing in 2025
True crime finally solved: ‘Stalking Claremont’ by Bret Christian
A genre that I enjoy (but for some reason tend to regard as a guilty pleasure) is true crime, particularly the police procedural type of non-fiction. I enjoy the ‘behind the scenes’ feeling when learning of the ins and outs of a major crime investigation. Stalking Claremont is just such a book. The author, Bret Christian, worked as a newspaper journalist and publisher in the areas of Perth in which the Claremont serial killer operated, so the events of 1996-1997, and the subsequent drawn out investigation, would have been of great interest to him.
In 1996 eighteen year old Sarah Spiers disappeared outside a Claremont nightclub and was never seen again. Four months later, Jane Rimmer disappeared from the same area. Her body was later found in bushland. In 1997 a third young woman, Ciara Glennon, was murdered. A manhunt ensued and the district went from being Perth’s party-central to living in fear that the killer would strike again.
Christian describes the ups and downs of what became Australia’s longest and most expensive investigation. Police failed to make an arrest, until forensic evidence pointed to Bradley Edwards and linked him with at least two of several other attacks that had occurred in the Claremont area. He was found guilty of two of the murders in September 2020 – more than two decades after Sarah’s disappearance.
The book outlines the missteps that were made: valuable clues overlooked; a tunnel-vision focus on three men as ‘persons of interest’ in spite of no physical evidence linking any of them to the crimes, resulting in great distress and trauma to the men and their families; a failure to link earlier attacks on other young women with the later murders; and careless record keeping which resulted in earlier mistakes being copied over and thus distorting information for later investigative teams to work with.
Once they discovered the ongoing errors, a startling notion hit the two men, What if these mistakes meant a vital piece of forensic evidence had been missed? One that cracked the case?
Stalking Claremont p224-225
That brought excitement, but also trepidation. Big police forces are no different from any other political beast, bureaucracies where reputations are jealously protected and promotions coveted.However, Christian does give credit where it’s due. His admiration for the work of specialist forensic and cold case review investigators is clear, as is his regard for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Hall, who presided over the judge-only trial, parts of which were held during Covid-imposed restrictions. The killer was found because of the incredibly detailed work of the forensic experts and long hours, days, months and years of grunt work by detectives assigned to the case. Edwards may well have thought, after a decade or so had passed, that he had ‘got away with’ his crimes, so I confess I had a thrill to think of how he must have felt when he was finally arrested.
Several things stood out for me in this book. In two of the cases under investigation, people admitted hearing a woman’s blood-curdling and distressed screams in the middle of the night – and did nothing! I’m amazed and horrified that anyone could hear unexplained screams and not, at the very least, pick up the phone to report their concerns to police.
Also of note is the role that local businesses, local and state governments can play in improving safety and security for residents and patrons. For example, if improvements in public transport, taxi services, CCTV cameras and street lighting had been made earlier, some of the young women may still be alive. Such prosaic measures don’t hold the same allure as forensics or crime scene investigators – but surely it’s better to prevent terrible crimes being committed in the first place?
Stalking Claremont is an engrossing examination of a high profile and complex campaign to catch and convict a serial killer. Readers who enjoy true crime and police stories will find it is a detailed examination of a case that absorbed so much police time, resources, public attention and of course, caused enormous grief and trauma for all involved.
Stalking Claremont is published by HarperCollins Australia in January 2021.
My thanks to the publishers for a copy to review.
