Saturday, April 9, 2011

BOOK REVIEW: Australian True Crime: Shallow Graves

Title: Australian True Crime: Shallow Graves


Author: Paul B Kidd
Publisher: Five Mile Press

RRP: $19.99

ISBN: 9781742480541

Release Date: February 2011

Description:

Shallow graves play a grim part in many of Australia's most mysterious, bizarre and horrendous murder cases. And Australia's bushland, deserts, foreshores, beaches and suburban landscapes offer many opportunities for a murderer to hide his prey.

Review:

Shallow Graves by True Crime writer Paul B Kidd covers one of the common elements of many murders in Australia, a shallow grave. With the vast unpopulated area of Australia, in beaches, forests, deserts and even the suburbs, there countless locations for killers to hide the body of their victims. This book details how many of these victims are quickly dumped in a shallow and loosely dug grave by the killer, either believing that the body won’t be found or hoping that the lack of care will ensure the body is found without too much effort by police.

Some killers leave their victims where they have murdered them, covered only in foliage, in the belief that there is little chance that the body will ever be discovered in the remoteness of its mournful resting place. Others leave their prey in bush culverts, aware that the possibility of discovery is remote and that when the rains come the evidence of their ghastly crime will be swept away, scattered on a riverbed, forever undetected.

But no matter where the places of concealment may be, they all fall into the category of shallow graves and play a grim part in some of the most mysterious, bizarre and horrendous murder cases in Australia’s history; cases such as, the Read-Luckman murder, The Family murders, the mystery of Harvey Jones, and the Thorne Kidnapping.

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