In October 1997, a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of Rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as "evil"; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.
Author Biography
Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She has been publishing novels, short stories, non-fiction and journalism since 1977 when her first novel, Monkey Grip, appeared. Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart and The Feel of Steel. She lives in Melbourne.
