A Life and Crimes summer reading guide

I can remember being in America what thirty years ago, and being in LA and the only thing on the news every night, on every channel was the Menendez trial. It was riveting them to see it in the fletch. And now, of course we're thinking they might have been sinned against.

The central character of the first season, who was also the central character of the second one, surrounded himself with so many odd balls and weirdos and people with stories to tell, and they tell those stories.

I'm Andrew Rule. This is Life and Crimes, and we're coming into that season, which in newspapers and the media generally we call it the silly season, and that just means it's summertime and a lot of us will go away from the big bad city to some sleepy beach or whatever, and there we will waste time, get sunburnt, drink beer and other fluids, and read books and watch screens because that's how we pass time. And for that reason,

It's a good title. It's a good title.

But as I should not have mentioned that, someone else will now pinch it. Naked self interest dictates that I plug two books published this year under my byline, and the first is most excellent book called Life and Crimes, the same name as the podcast published by McMillan, my very good friends at McMillan, who I'm very fond of. And it's a collection of true crime stories funnily enough and a.

Lot of sort of stories without giving too much away could a reader.

Many of them have been touched on in the podcasts, but some may not have. Just for those who like to read a well curated, well edited collection of true stories,

So that's just so.

Our listeners will know that the one they need is the one that says murder on Easy Street because it has the latest and brightest developments in that story. So two books, two books, which I have to say are very similar, and I would advise people out there that if they buy one, do not buy the.

Other, or they could buy the other for a friend or relative.

They could buy the other one for a friend or relative, and I wish they would, but please buy two by all means, but don't expect that you'll find vastly different stories between the two.

So if you are listening to this before Christmas, and hopefully we will have this episode out before Christmas, great books to give to friends, families, loved ones, acquaintances, work, colleagues.

True Now, in the interest of hands across the water, we must also mention my former colleague and great friend John Sylvester, who has a new book out which is called Dark City, which follows up his very successful book Naked City, published by our friends at McMillan. Dark Cities just out and is an excellent collection of stuff, very

He's that sort of blow.

So Naked City. You don't know where that name comes from. Certainly get the book, don't look it up for any other purpose.

No, that's right, I'm true. Now we're doing around the grounds on books and films. This is not comprehensive. They're just a few things that come to mind. There's one that came out this year. We interviewed the author The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop, and that is by an excellent Sydney journalist called Neil Mercer. We are critics of Sydney things often down here in Melbourne.

Quite rightly, we'll work quite rightly.

But I've always had a high opinion of Sydney journalists. I think that several of them are very very good and we have respect and Neil Mercer is right up there always has been ranging around the grounds. Again, we have the Definity of Easy Street book by our great friend Helen Thomas. It is called Murder on Easy Street and Helen has done an updated version of that book and she's been in Melbourne this very week that we're

And she was on the show a couple of times this year, most recently talking about developments, although not the Perry Crumblas development, but other development developments in the Easy Street case. She was also so on a couple of years ago. Will put the names of the shows that she has been on in the description of this episode so you can go back and listen to her talk about the Easy streetcase.

That's good and also if you have a little flutter on the horses save you five dollars each way or whatever. Helen bought a horse in New Zealand, a young horse a couple of years ago, for about two and a half thousand dollars, which is not much, and she and others brought this horse back to Australia and he races under the name of Stylish Secret, and he has turned into quite.

A successful little race horse.

He's only a little feller, but he's out in the paddic at the minute. He's one more than one hundred thousand dollars in steake. He's going to come back in and we are barracking for Stylish Secret to win races in the autumn, and our listeners should keep an eye open for him because he's a very heartwarming story.

An early tip, early tip.

Also, Neil has also been on the show talking the Kingpin and the Crooked Cop. Will put a link in the description to that show as well, because he was very good on the show.

Terrific bog. Now.

One of the others up there, of course, is Kate mcclemont. She's going very well at the minute. She's really sticking the boots into a low called Alan Jones.

Oh so there you go.

I've been in the news as well.

Yes, Kate is a.

Very tough unit. I wouldn't want to cross Kate. She'd fix you right up.

She's good.

Now, some people we can't get on.

The show, although we can try.

We have had Don Winslow, the great American true crime and also fiction author. Wonderful author. If you're wondering what to read over summer, I suspected almost anything by Don Winslow.

It fits the bill.

Another great American author ex journo. I tend to like them true crime writers who go from newspapers into writing fiction. One of the best of the is a guy called Carl Hyason who comes out of Florida, Miami, and he writes a particularly funny brand of fictional crime. And he's good news. Carl Hyason.

Now, yeah, he's always talking about Tallahassee and the goings on in Tallahassee. Did he not do the book that was then turned into a film starring strip Teas starring Demi Moore.

I think that is precisely the sort of title he uses. He has excellent titles and strip teas. I think he's one of them. He's a very funny guy. And his books, although they're sort of comic and comedic and tongue in cheek, are good in it. As a really top end crime reporter in his day on the big paper down in Miami, Miami Herald, I think he knows what he's talking about.

So his characters are very well.

Grounded in real people in some ways, and he understands the process of storytelling and how to make it sort of sound realistic, although clearly then true stories. Another one like that in America is from Boston. Different kettle of fish altogether, not the same Boston as Forloridda very different. Mone's sort of like far North Queensland and Mon's Melbourne.

That's different.

But the man in Boston has been dead for a long time. But he was a great, great crime writer, a guy called George V. For Victor V. Higgins, and George V. Higgins was a crime lawyer, I think a prosecutor. He was a lecturer in I think literature, and he was also a very successful crime author. And he died in his fifties. So this guy jammed a lot of

So I'm listening to Friends of Eddie Coyle at your recommendation right now.

How are you and how's it going?

Well, it's very interesting, because I should say listeners. If you are on Spotify, it is available through that as an audiobook, and so that's the version that I've been listening to. Is I go about my day and it's quite like another book, Trainspotting. It is you learn the cadence and the speech patterns of some of the characters in the book, and from that you can produce what's going on. What's going on?

It is very it's as tough.

As Irving walshap something completely different. Now, not everyone's going to love George V. Higgins. That's sort of dense and it's tough, and that's very much of its time.

True, But it also.

Established a new type of literature in a way, anyway, something different, completely very English, very sort of Midsummer Murders in its way, but clever, smart, great publishing. All the books by Richard Osmond. You know, there's Thursday Murder Club. We chase killers or something and we investigate murders whatever. But he's got a whole series of these and they're a little bit sort of cute, kitchen table type stuff, very tongue in cheek, very clever, very English, and they

Now.

He's also on a podcast called The Rest Is Entertainment with a woman named Marina Hine, and she is a columnist talking about media matters over in the UK. I think Richmond Osmond is also sort of part of the quiz Juicy does things like.

Pointless, very clever guy, very clever sort of in that that Stephen Frye. You know these guys with brains about as big as Tasmania, who can actually turn their hand to almost anything. The TV producers, but they're also quiz masters. They're also often they're poets and novelists and everything else. It's quite astonishing how good they are. And he's one of them.

And for our first podcast recommendation, if you are interested in entertainment and also probably entertainment with an English or a UK sort of bias, Rest Is Entertainment is a very good show, as is the rest of their stable. There's a podcast company called Goalhanger and they put out The Rest Is Entertainment, The Rest is History, which is two historians talking about historical matters, as you would expect from that title. They also do a World War two

Oh Lovely, which is espionage.

Yespiona, So it's a former I think CIA analyst talking with a former reporter. I think still a reporter on matters of clandestine goings on, and their first couple of episodes have been pretty good. They've talked about one of the Iran KuPS and the CIA and MI six parts to play in at an all involved sort of half drunk operatives from various parts of Lord going in and doing things, and.

It's frightening the world. Peace relies on who drank vodka?

Well, that's not that's it and it's a roaring talk.

Well, while on the English oldie and goldie just a very fine writer. Who is Kate Atkinson. I won't bother going through all the titles she's written, but everything she writes is very readable. There is one collection of short stories of hers which are beautifully written. They're a little bit odd, bit strange, they're not sort of factual, they're not like real life. They're a bit magical. But her novels great Who Done It? They're really classy, stylish. She's

But also very tough and out of it.

Of course, out of these excellent books which I've been reading over the years has come an excellent series streamer series called Slow Horses, And as an indicator of the quality of it, the lead part of the said Jackson Lamb is played by the most excellent actor, Gary Oldman, and the theme song is written and performed by a blow called Mick Jagger. Have you ever heard of him? It is so good, so good, you'll never regret watching it.

He abused that sense of sort of broken down.

Perfect but he thinks about boozers and losers in an accent like that.

And Gary Oldman in some of those scenes really looks like he's sort of just gotten himself out of a relationship Shop, And.

Now we've sort of moving into the TV series, aren't we. Have you seen anything this year that you'd recommend John.

So there's a couple of documentaries on streaming services that I absolutely can A couple of them, I suppose would be good for people who, as I did, didn't really get into the story when it happened, and they are who killed John Beney Ramsey? What is a great story, a very sort of chilling story but had a lot

One of the great great stories, no doubt. I've seen quite a few good series this year and would recommend them a couple of Irish. One of those is kin kin as in Ki N and I would suggest that it's the Irish equivalent of the Sopranos, which goes to its top quality. It's fearsome casting, it's very tough plotting, and really it's very tough ending.

It's great stuff.

Like I sort of a mafia, Irish mafia.

Mafia totally, and it is an indicator of what I believe to be a true story, and that is that there is no Italian mafia in Belfast at least, and this might point out why because the locals are a little bit tasty. There is another Irish series I intend to watch over Christmas and that he's Say Nothing. When I say Irish, it's set largely in Ireland.

It's about the troubles.

It's based on the most excellent nonfiction book of the same title, Say Nothing, by a wonderful journalist and author called Patrick raden Keif, and Patrick raden Keff's sort of Boston Irish He's an American of Irish descent, but I believe his mother was an Aussie. So he's the internation,

Note speaking of streaming, we've talked about who killed John Bene Ramsey, but there's also one about the Menandez brothers, called the Menandez Brothers very good, and they obviously in the news again. Now.

Yes, I can remember being in America what thirty years ago and being in LA and the only thing on the news every night, on every channel was the Menendez trial. It was rivoting to see it in the flesh. And now it's come up again and now of course we're thinking they might have been sinned against, which makes sense to me.

Yeah, absolutely, and this documentary goes into that. But it's interesting because I was post OJ. It was one of the big cases that was all in front of the cameras.

Yes, and it's up there with OJA, isn't it. It's sort of the justice system on show with a camera on every angle. It's astonishing.

Another one that takes a different tack. This one is very much more of a in some ways a traditional style of documentary, but also I think does things that other documentaries don't do. And that's the second season of the Jinx.

I remember the original one, and it's as good as the first one.

It's not as groundbreaking as the first one. The first one again had a lot going for it, had a lot going for it. And if you haven't seen it, go see it because the ending of that is one of the more chilling endings of a documentary that you'll see.

I think, Yeah, wonderful, wonderful place of work.

This one has, I think something that a lot of documentaries shy away from or just don't capture, and that is character. Robert Durst, the central character of the first season, who was also the central character of the second one, surrounded himself with so many odd balls and weird and people with stories to tell them. They tell those stories. And the director, a guy called Andrew Jireki, has plied his trades through his entire career, really bringing character as

Wonderful when they've got an opportunity to mine that material, just thinking it's not crime but fascinating. The It and Senner documentary about the racing Drover and Amy Weinehouse, Yes, one called one's called Senna and one's called Amy, I think. But wonderful life stories but broad to life because each of them grew up at a time and were a sufficient interest that people filmed them a lot, so that every part of their life has been filmed.

YEP.

It's an incredible thing to have if you're a documentary maker, which doesn't.

Apply to you know a lot of us.

Our lives aren't recorded on video, and therefore it's very hard to reconstruct.

Them maybe in maybe twenty thirty years time when young people everyone, everyone's on YouTube.

So podcasts, podcast well, there's many of them, and we make no pretense of trying to listen to them all because we're busy doing our own. But just to you know, shamelessly plug people. We know Emily Webb. I think she caught your eye. She's a good friend of the Broke.

Yeah, so friend of the show. Emily web has a new show called Unthinkable, good title, very good title. Other ones Bronwin from our stable mates at the Australian.

Yes, excellent, that's Headley Thomas.

So that's Headley Thomas and I think they're up to season two of that. And of course there's Eyecatch Killers from Gary Jubilan of course up North. But one that is relatively new, it's just come out, in fact there are still episodes to come is called Witness William Tyrell and that has been produced by Dan Box, who's a form of colleague of ours. Also by Nini Young who is a former colleague. In fact, she did a show called The Missing forty nine Million, and we spoke to

So he's uncovered fresh ground.

Uncovered fresh ground, and again not unlike the Jinks sort of character comes into it. There's a couple of people telling their stories and they really sort of you can feel the care that they had over this child and the deep sorrow and sort of almost palpable pain that they feel.

Of course, it's heart wrenching stuff and no matter which way you look at that one many laughs in William Tyrrell, Well, I think we've.

Probably fleshed out a few ideas for people to listen, read and watch and all the rest of it.

A few potential gifts there for potential gifts potentially with the author name of Andrew Rawle and a couple of them, but potentially.

Yes, we regard these John Sylvestro and myself regard them as the brother in Law book. It's the book that's with just a bit more than a pair of socks or you boxer shorts.

But not too much, yeah, just enough.

It's well under the fifty dollar market because you know, really, you don's been more than fifty bucks on your above in.

Law, do you.

So we've obviously gone through quite a few recommendations here and we'll put some of our top picks in the show notes for you gentle listener as a Christmas or New Year or holiday present.

It's been a very good twenty twenty four, John, and i'd like to thank you for a heap of hard work turning this stuff into something that people want to listen to, because I know how much you do to make that transformation, and I thank you again.

Well, thank you, Andrew, and thank you for telling the stories that people want to listen to.

No problem, we'll do it all again in the new year.

So that's a threat.

Thanks for listening. Life in Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to News Podcasts sold at News dot com dot Au. That is all one word news podcasts sold. And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.