Chloe Hooper

The last thing THE TALL MAN needs is another review - the book is winning awards left right and centre at the moment. I must confess it wasn't a book I was particularly looking forward to reading, suspecting that the subject matter was going to be very very confronting. After it won the DAVITT AWARD from the Sisters in Crime, the judges comments on the night, were the little extra push required to make me stop dithering (well sooking really) and pick up the book.

Whilst I'm very very glad I show more finally did, reading THE TALL MAN was not a pleasant, easy or necessarily an ultimately satisfying task. Not, I hasten to add because of the standard of the writing, but because there's is no resolution to the mess that is Palm Island and the death of Cameron Doomadgee in particular, and white-Australia's relationship with the Indigenous People in general.

But then there are some very unpleasant, unbelievable and just flat out unsatisfactory and unacceptable aspects to the story of Palm Island and death of Doomadgee. (For some reason I still can't seem to get out of my head the fact that when Australia did the last census report - 2006 - Palm Island was "forgotten". How the hell do you "forget" an entire community? Just to add insult to injury it's a community that many many indigenous people were forcibly moved to.... it beggars belief).

There are aspects to the way that this community was setup, works and lives which are confrontational, and there are aspects to the death of Doomadgee and to the subsequent investigation, inquest and trials which just don't do a lot to give you much faith in justice, or even in the truth being paramount. THE TALL MAN delivers this story in a matter-of-fact, restrained, observant and respectful manner. There's no sensationalism of the events, it's up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

It's a book that had to be written, and it really is a book that should be read. show less

I understand that many readers are disappointed by this book because it does not meet the usual true crime criteria and they expected something different. For me, however, who is not a true crime buff, it was a very good book.

The three Australian woman writers accompanied the trial of Erin Patterson, who invited four of her relatives to lunch and poisoned them by hiding mushrooms in a Beef Wellington, killing three of them. The authors taped their conversations about the trial and thought show more about turning those tapes into a podcast, but then published them as a book. This audiobook was than narrated from that book, so it's not comprised of the original tapes. It is obvious that the text was edited, but it still felt quite natural to me.

I have been kind of morbidly fascinated by this case since I first read about it, and one thing I liked about the book is that the authors try to explain where that fascination comes from - the archetype of the female poisoner, the reversal of women's traditional role of feeding and nurturing, the marriage drama, the Midsomer Murders-like storyline. The conversation flows freely and touches upon many topics. It traces the progress of the trial, but also includes the personal thoughts of the authors, their observations and how they respond to what they see. They also analyze what the story might signify in the wider context of society and why many people, especially women, are so interested in true crime.

While not all the contents were equally intriguing, I really liked listening to the thoughts of these three women. I learned a lot about the actual case, but the discussions of the sociology of it all were even more compelling. show less

Bushfires are practically synonymous with Summer in Australia, and there have been several severe and deadly conflagrations since its settlement including the recent large scale fire of 2019/2020. Of these blazes however, Black Saturday has the dubious distinction of claiming the most lives in recorded history.

On Saturday 7th February 2009, as temperatures soared to the mid 40’s, there were as many as four hundred separate fires burning in Victoria. By the time they were extinguished show more 450,000 ha (1,100,000 acres) of land had been razed, over 3500 structures (including homes, commercial premises, and agricultural buildings) were destroyed, stock and crops were lost, and 173 people lost their lives while hundreds more were injured.

One of the blazes, known as The Churchill Complex fire, started in the early afternoon on 7 February 2009 in the Latrobe Valley. The fire travelled rapidly, impacting on several towns in south east Victoria. Eleven people died as a result of the fire, 145 houses were destroyed, and more than 25,861 hectares were burnt. Less than a week after the fire began, investigators were able to determine that it was caused by arson.

In The Arsonist: Mind on Fire, Chloe Hooper tells the story of this disastrous event, and its devastating impact on its victims. She then details the investigation that identified Brendan Sokaluk, a Churchill local, as responsible, and his subsequent trial and conviction.

The statements from those that lost loved one’s, and property, are heartbreaking to read. Survivors, including the rural firefighters who fought the blaze, were forever changed by their confrontation with the fire, and the event continued to take a toll long after the fire was extinguished.

In Australia, Hooper reports, around 13% of vegetation fires are maliciously lit and it’s estimated that only one per cent of bushfire arsonists are ever caught. This is often because the fires are started in unpopulated areas, and the subsequent blaze conveniently destroys any evidence that may have remained. In the case of the Churchill Complex fire, investigators quickly suspected arson was at play and their attention was drawn to the suspicious behaviour of a man identified as Brendan Sokaluk.

Hooper takes us through the investigation, drawing on a number of perspectives to show how the police reached their conclusions about the cause of the fire, and who was to blame. Brendan Sokaluk, a 39 year old local resident, was seen in the area of ignition, by multiple witnesses, and met the general profile of an arsonist - he was from a disadvantaged background, unemployed, and anti social. During his initial interview, Sokaluk confessed to setting the fire ‘accidentally’, and then retracted his admission, but while it became clear to officers that Brendan had some level of cognitive deficiency, several suspected he was exaggerating his inability to comprehend the investigating detectives questions. Nevertheless the police felt they had enough information to charge Sokaluk with ten counts of arson causing death, and 181 other charges, the majority relating to criminal damage (plus a charge of possession for child pornography found on his computer that was later dropped).

While a psychiatric assessment declared Sokaluk fit to stand trial, his lawyers were never confident that he understood the gravity of the charges against him, nor the mechanics of the legal proceedings. Brendan never took the stand, and no true motive for starting the fire was ever established. The trial began in 2011, nearly three years after Sokaluk’s arrest, and Hooper leads the reader through the process that eventually saw him convicted and sentenced to 17 years plus time served (3 years). With his fourteen year minimum, Sokaluk will be eligible for parole in 2023.

I found The Arsonist to be a well-written and balanced account of Black Saturday, though I was expecting Hooper would a provide a little more detail and context to the disaster itself. I do think her reportage on the investigation was concise, and of the trial, nuanced. She is respectful of those who were most affected by the blaze, but not without empathy for Brendan Sokaluk and his family.

Fire is a merciless beast, one the Australian landscape is particularly susceptible to, especially as we head towards even more extreme temperatures in a changing climate. Having ignored much of the Aboriginal wisdom in managing the land with fire, there is ample fuel for people to ignite for any one of the complicated reasons arsonists do so, and Hooper suggests we ignore the risks at our peril. show less

The Tall Man is beautifully written, complex, passionate and about an important topic -- it was a perfect book to read aloud on a long car trip. I knew only the vague outline of the case: Aboriginal man dies in the cells of horrific injuries; the policeman who arrested him for swearing in the street was the only one alone with him between his arrest in good health and his death a couple of hours later; policeman almost wasn't even brought to trial, and then then was acquitted of any show more wrongdoing; Aboriginal people who rioted in protest were treated to the full force of the law. I've seen the book praised for its even-handedness, for not taking sides. In my view such praise is misplaced. Chloe Hooper combines a journalist's attention to evidence with a novelist's eye for the telling detail. She is careful to give the process of law its full due and at no stage makes an explicit judgement contrary to the jury's findings. Given that Senior Sergeant Hurley, the tall and bulky policeman at the centre of things, wouldn't talk to her, she does a very good job of conveying a sense of him as a human being -- a generous, thoughtful man under incredible pressure of many kinds. But it's very clear that her sympathies lie with the bereaved Doomadgee family, and it's very easy in the final pages for a reader to come to conclusions that are at odds with those of the jury.

We stopped reading fairly often to reflect on how the book illuminated or was illuminated by our own experiences, connections to Paula Shaw's recently pubished [Sev en Seasons in Aurukun], , the fabulous 'You can't handle the truth!' speech by the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men. We noticed the preponderance of Catholics in the story. We ruminated on the validity or otherwise of the north-south divide (northerners dealing with harsh realities, southerners sitting comfortably in judgement) as a way of understanding the world. Terrible subject, terrific book. show less