Book picks similar to
Murder in Suburbia by Emily Webb


true-crime
non-fiction
australian
crime

The Ghost: The Murder of Police Chief Greg Adams and the Hunt for His Killer


Maureen Boyle - 2021
    Christmas was coming to Saxonburg, Pennsylvania—a quaint borough of just 1,300—in three short weeks. The winter air was crisp. Colored lights sparkled on houses. He was only a block and a half from the Police Department, and this was just an average traffic stop.Until it wasn’t.The devoted husband and father of two little boys was about to meet any law enforcement officer’s nightmare. Moments later, he would lay dying in a pool of his own blood on that white winter snow, while his killer vanished like an apparition into thin air.Despite his many aliases, the true identity of the murderer was quickly found. The killer himself, was not. As State Police and FBI investigators peeled back the twisted layers of low-level mobster Donald Webb’s life, the path to the killer would wind through decades … toward a shocking conclusion. After all, secrets can only be kept for so long.

Gina Rinehart: The Untold Story of the Richest Woman in the World


Adele Ferguson - 2012
    The daughter of Lang Hancock – legendary arch-conservative, secessionist, mining millionaire and discoverer of the world's largest iron deposit in the Pilbara – Gina has grown up in a family known as much for its front-page legal stoushes as for its business acumen and toughness.With her reported wealth more than doubling in the last twelve months, Rinehart is beginning to flex the enormous power her money gives, buying large shareholdings in television's Ten Network and newspaper group Fairfax Media. They are moves that will give Rinehart and her controversial views a major place in Australian life and public affairs.Based on painstaking research and a wealth of interviews with Rinehart's colleagues, friends, family and former employees, award-winning journalist Adele Ferguson has written the definitive biography, shining a light into the private world of Gina Rinehart, her family, her feuds and the iron determination that has driven her relentless rise.

True Stories from the Morgue. Stories from a Forensic Counsellor


John Merrick - 2017
    What’s it like to work in a morgue? This book describes, first hand, coping with mutilated or decomposed bodies and the carnage of large-scale disasters like the Bali bombings. Equally as traumatic, the suicides, accidental drownings, car accidents and murders. But forensic counsellors do much more, witnessing autopsies, attending crime scenes and coronial enquiries. It’s all in a day’s work. Find out what it’s like behind the scenes. Those working at the morgue come face to face with death on a daily basis, and forensic counsellors like John have to find the compassion and kindness to ease the grief of those left behind.

Loose Units


Paul F. Verhoeven - 2018
    Well, an ex-cop. Long since retired, John spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. Paul, however, is something of an artsy, sensitive soul who can’t understand why he doesn’t have the same heroism and courage as his dad. One day, John offers Paul the chance of a lifetime: he'll spill his guts, on tape, for the first time ever, and try to get to the bottom of this difference between them.What unfolds is a goldmine of true-crime stories, showing John’s dramatic (and sometimes dodgy) experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s. The crims, the car chases, the frequent brushes with death and violence, and the grey zone between what’s ethical and what’s effective: finally Paul gets real insight into what’s formed his father’s character.Thrilling, fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny, Loose Units is a high-octane adventure in policing, integrity and learning what your father is really all about.

Too Close to Home: The Samantha Zaldivar Case


Laurinda Wallace - 2017
    This is one of them. Seven-year-old Samantha Zaldivar is reported missing in February 1997. Despite the best efforts of the community and law enforcement to find her, it seems the first grader has disappeared without a trace until the forensic evidence leads a multi-agency task force to an ugly possibility. Months later, an unlikely turn of events reveals the young girl’s fate, which rocks the rural county in Western New York. Dedicated and meticulous police work brings a murderer to justice, but not without a cost to those involved. Stephen C. Tarbell, a retired Wyoming County Sheriff’s investigator shares his personal account of the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Samantha Zaldivar.

Court in the Middle


Andrew Fraser - 2007
    Then it all went horribly wrong. In 1999 he was charged with being knowingly concerned with the importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine. Fraser pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing, trafficking a small quantity, and using cocaine over a period of time. He was sentenced to seven years in maximum security prison. Court in the Middle describes his early years—growing up in a family of lawyers, running hard to build a criminal law practice; his successful years with a national practice, and defending high profile, sometimes notorious, clients. He also discusses his relationship with cocaine, addiction and deals, crime and punishment, and the shocking details of his time spent in a maximum security prison.

Those Days in January: The Abduction and Murder of Meredith Hope Emerson


John Cagle - 2020
    The search would last only five days before the worst came to pass. Gary Hilton, suspected in the deaths of three more hikers across the Southeast, was arrested for her murder. What was once a small mountain town had fallen into the sights of a serial killer. Less than a month later, Hilton would plead guilty and be sentenced to life in prison in one of the swiftest cases in Georgia history. Lead investigator John Cagle shares the details of the investigation from start to finish in this day-by-day account. Witness the struggle firsthand to seek justice for Meredith, all while protecting her memory from the opportunists, sensationalist reporters, and unscrupulous practices that threatened to deny her the dignity she deserves. Discover not only the facts of her murder, but the impact on the personal lives of those who worked tirelessly to find her. For them, those days in January will never end.

Green Is The New Black: Inside Australia's Hardest Women's Jails


James Phelps - 2017
    Nor is it Martin Bryant, the man responsible for claiming 35 lives in the Port Arthur massacre. No, the person in Australia controversially ruled 'too dangerous to be released', the one who needs chains, leather restraints and a full-time posse of guards is Rebecca Butterfield: a self-mutilating murderer, infamous for slicing guards and stabbing another inmate 33 times.But Butterfield is not alone. There's cannibal killer Katherine Knight, jilted man-murderer Kathy Yeo, jailbreak artist Lucy Dudko, and a host of others who will greet you inside the gates of Australia's hardest women's jails. You will meet drug dealers, rapists and fallen celebrities. You will hear tales of forbidden love, drug parties gone wrong and guards who trade 40-cent phone calls for sex. All will be revealed in Green Is the New Black, a comprehensive account of women's prison life by award-winning author and journalist James Phelps.

Aaron Hernandez's Killing Fields: Exposing Untold Murders, Violence, Cover-Ups, and the NFL's Shocking Code of Silence


Dylan Howard - 2019
    For the first time, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields will reveal the real, hitherto unknown motive for the killing of Odin Lloyd—the only crime for which Hernandez was ever convicted and a revelation so shocking it will shake the foundations of the NFL itself. It will also unpick a pattern of violence and brutality stretching back to his time as a teenager at the University of Florida, revealing further shooting victims, evidence of his involvement in the double murder of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado in 2012. Featuring new interviews with Hernandez’s cellmates, serving police investigators, prosecutors, psychologists, attorneys—as well as key witnesses including Hernandez’s drug dealer, a male stripper he hired days before the killing of Lloyd—plus extensive testimony from relatives of Hernandez’s victims, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields is the exhaustive, definitive account of the rise and fall of a man undone by his own appetite for violence, gangsterism, power, drugs, and self-destruction. This is the real Aaron Hernandez story—and perhaps just the beginning of a whole new murder investigation.

Murder of an Elvis Girl: Solving the Jenny Maxwell Case


Buddy Moorehouse - 2021
    

The Straight Dope: The inside story of sport's biggest drug scandal


Chip Le Grand - 2015
     What happened at Essendon, what happened at Cronulla, is only part of the story. From the basement office of a suburban football club to the seedy corners of Peptide Alley to the polished corridors of Parliament House, The Straight Dope is an inside account of the politics, greed and personal feuds which fuelled an extraordinary saga. A football club and coach determined to win, a sports scientist who doesn't play by the rules, an AFL administration hell bent on control, an anti-doping authority out of its depth, a generation of footballers held hostage by scandal and an unpopular government that just wants it to end; for two tumultuous seasons this was the biggest game of all.

Return to Uluru


Mark McKenna - 2021
    One event in 1934 - the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill McKinnon, and subsequent Commonwealth inquiry - stood out as a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time.But then, through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, McKenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today. As he explains, 'Every thread of the story connected to the present in surprising ways.' In a sequence of powerful revelations, McKenna explores what truth-telling and reconciliation look like in practice.Return to Uluru brings a cold case to life. It speaks directly to the Black Lives Matter movement, but is completely Australian. Recalling Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man, it is superbly written, moving, and full of astonishing, unexpected twists. Ultimately it is a story of recognition and return, which goes to the very heart of the country. At the centre of it all is Uluru, the sacred site where paths fatefully converged.

Siege


Deborah Snow - 2018
    A terrorist attack on Australian soil. For seventeen hours Islamic State-inspired gunman Man Haron Monis held his captives in a terrifying drama that paralysed Sydney and kept a nation glued to its television screens. Two hostages were killed and three seriously wounded. The others would have their lives changed for ever.Despite the police leadership declaring it was well prepared for a terrorist attack, many shortcomings on the night revealed a response that fell seriously short of that promise. Deborah Snow lays bare what happened behind the scenes in the cafe as the hostages tried to keep themselves alive while waiting for a police response that didn't come. She also takes us into the police command posts as communications, equipment and decision-making structures broke down. Hurtling towards its inevitable and tragic conclusion, Siege draws us into a vortex of police missteps, extraordinary bravery and profound grief to reveal what happened during that awful day. Shocking, compelling and revealing Siege will take its place as the classic account of these events.

The Job: Fighting Crime From the Frontline


Charlie Bezzina - 2010
    The Job is an explosive and intriguing account of what it takes to be a criminal investigator at the highest level.

Roadies: The Secret History of Australian Rock'n'Roll


Stuart Coupe - 2018
    The roadies see it all, and now they are sharing their secrets. Roadies are the unsung heroes of the Australian music industry. They unload the PAs and equipment, they set it all up, they make sure everything is running smoothly before, during and after the gigs. Then they pack everything up in the middle of the night, put it in the back of the truck and hit the road to another town - to do it all over again. They know everything about the pre- and post-show excesses. They bear witness to overdoses, the groupies, the obsessive fans. They are part of - and often organise - all the craziness that goes on behind the scenes of the concerts and pub gigs you go to. From The Rolling Stones to AC/DC, Bob Marley to Courtney Love, Sherbet to The Ted Mulry Gang, INXS to Blondie - these guys have seen it all. And now they're stepping onto the stage and talking.The Roadies' Creed: If it's wet, drink it. If it's dry, smoke it. If it moves, **** it. If it doesn't move, throw it in the back of the truck. 'Fabulous . . . a bold portrait' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD on Stuart Coupe's GUDINSKI