THE SHARK NET Memories and Murder

Softcover. When the author was growing up in the sand dunes of the West Australian coast a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew - but who was a stranger to the killer. Over 4yrs the killer randomly murdered 8 strangers. He killed them by almost every possible means bar explosives, drowning and poison. Convinced they were looking for several different killers, the police seemed helpless to catch him. In the isolated and innocent city of Perth, these mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and a sometimes reckless fatalism, as well as instant local myth. But the murders and their ricocheting effects also affected him, at the time and later, in the most personal way. In that otherwordly town often described as the most remote city in the world, wedged as it is between the desert and the Indian Ocean, 2700 kilometres from the nearest metropolis, these were the pivotal events of the author's youth. This is an extraordinary memoir of dark and light, of a serial killer and the man who unwittingly employed him - the author's father. It is an unforgettable portrait of one boy's coming of age and a haunting anatomy of a murderer by one of Australia's celebrated writers. Eric Edgar Cooke would be the last person hanged in Freemantle Gaol on October 26, 1964, and the second-last person to be executed in Australia. Ronald Ryan, hanged in Melbourne's Pentridge Gaol in 1967 for killing a prison warder during an escape, would be the last. 358pp. 8vo. softcover. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. with no creasing to covers.