Three true crime books each offering a very different view of criminality in Australia.
Underbelly A Tale Of Two Cities 2009 True Story Behind The TV Drama
Chris 'Rentakill' Flannery was a Melbourne gunman who sold his services to Sin City's highest bidder. He went on the missing list because he didn't realise the future belonged to those who controlled pills and powders, not pistols. A world of corrupt cops, bent politicians and beautiful women who fell for rich gangsters. And a few detectives trying to stop the tidal wave.
This was Australia's underbelly.
White Collar Crime In Australia by Timothy Hall 1979 Hardcover
The Tait Case by Creighton Burns Paperback 1962
No one doubted that Robert Peter Tait was guilty of a horrible murder. Why, then, did such bitter controversy arise from the determination of the Victorian government to hang him by the neck until he was dead, as the law provided? Perhaps no criminal case has raised so sharply so many different issues of principle and conscience:
Is there any place for the death penalty in an enlightened society?
Do legal concepts of insanity lag dangerously behind scientific knowledge of the mind?
What light does the case throw upon the relationship between executive and judiciary?
Creighton Burns has carefully told the story of Tait, his crime, and the complex series of moves which followed. He examines with understanding but objectivity the many deeply felt issues of conscience which troubled all who thought about the Tait case.
