The Australian Crime 1: A Collection of Notorious True Crime Stories

When I first teamed up with top-rating radio broadcaster George Moore in October 2001 to do the Summer Weekend Show on Sydney's Radio 2UE, neither of us realised just how successful the show would become.
Within weeks the ratings were through the roof and we eventually wound-up doing what has now become known as The Weekend Show all year round, from 1-6 pm on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. And that's how it is today.
There are too many individual reasons to list that have contributed to The Weekend Show's success. But from listener response, there is little doubt that our weekly 'Crime File' segment is one of them.
Each Sunday, just after 4 o'clock, we present a 10 to 15 minute abbreviated version of a famous (or, sometimes, not so well known) Australian crime. I read it out, George interjects from time to time with queries and, at the end, we discuss various aspects of the case. Then the listeners ring us up and have a chat about it.
Over the years we have looked at more than 140 cases, and for this book I have chosen 90 cases that I consider to be the most interesting for the Australian true crime enthusiast. Hence the subtitle - A 'Best of' Collection.
This is not a reference book such as Australia's Serial Killers or the Never To Be Released series in which the criminals are catalogued according to the nature of their crimes or the sentences they received. And for this reason you will find that the stories in this book are not in chronological or alphabetical order.
Personally, unless a book is a reference book as the aforementioned are, I don't like reading a book of stories - especially crime stories - that goes back into history, starts at the beginning and ends in the modern day.
My preference is to go from the old to the new (or vice versa) and then back to the old again, from one type of crime to another, from a long story to a short one. These are the books I find most interesting, and for this reason The Australian Crime File is a mix of the old and the new and the long and the short. I trust my selection of the order of the chapters is to your liking.