Author(s): Melissa Hardie

True Crime

Every contact leaves a trace. Locard's founding dictum of forensic science can be taken to describe the complicated relationship between literature and true crime writing. As the genre of true crime becomes ever more prominent in Australian reading habits, its literary impact invites investigation. From Ned Kelly to Schapelle Corby, in a nation state founded in acts of dispossession, we track our way through some notable cases with an eye to the relationship between the poetic, the sensational, and the everyday. Contributors include Kristen Davis, Peter Doyle, Michael Farrell, Ross Gibson, Melissa Jane Hardie, Belinda Morrissey, Rosalind Smith, and Marise Williams.