The Mushroom Tapes
Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial
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4.0 • 48 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The Mushroom Tapes brings together three renowned writers of true crime: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein.
For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.
The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other, an unputdownable record of the writers' private conversations about their impressions from inside the courtroom. They explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains unknowable about Erin Patterson.
If you read one book about how Erin Patterson was convicted of triple murder make it The Mushroom Tapes.
Helen Garner is the author of The First Stone and This House of Grief, among many other titles. Her most recent book is The Season.
Chloe Hooper is the author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, along with two acclaimed novels. Her most recent book is Bedtime Story.
Sarah Krasnostein is the author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer. She is writing a book about the High Country murders.
Customer Reviews
Conversations may be the weakness in this book
Conversational asides may have been interesting to the writers but not engaging for me as a reader. It is insightful to understand how a book such as this is shaped but at times these read like padding. Perhaps to do with the intent for it to be a podcast? It took away from what overall was a well written overview of the trial and the personalities of the accused, witnesses and legal teams. There was sufficient new information and analysis to make this an essential read. I am sure much more will be written and emerge about Erin Patterson, but I agree with the writers, it is the ongoing consequences of this crime that are unsettling. She destroyed far more than the three lives she took and for what purpose? That still seems elusive after reading this book.