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In July 2023, an unremarkable family lunch in a quiet, rural town spiralled into one of Australia''s darkest tragedies. Days after Erin Patterson hosted her estranged husband''s parents, aunt and uncle at her home, three of the guests were dead and another critically ill, all poisoned by Death Cap mushrooms. Two years later, Patterson stood accused of this shocking crime and her court case - with its stories of mushroom foraging and family secrets - gripped onlookers across the world. Amongst those drawn into the unfolding drama were three renowned true crime writers: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. Together, they followed Patterson''s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, stayed in a nearby motel and spent late nights immersed in fervent discussion about the case''s complex themes: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology, and murder. The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other - an unputdownable record of these intimate conversations and courtroom impressions. It explores the uneasy gap between legal certainty and messy reality, the writers'' conflicted feelings about the true crime genre, and the unknowable depths of this haunting story.
About the author
Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She worked as a high school teacher, then as a freelance journalist. Since 1977 she has published novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. She is the winner of the 2006 inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, the 2016 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-fiction, the 2019 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and the 2023 Australian Society of Authors Medal. Her books include This House of Grief, Monkey Grip and The Children's Bach.
