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“ Gripping, gritty and unsparing but never gratuitous in its details, this is true crime writing at its best. But Hooper goes beyond the procedurals and the scene setting to examine the greater context of the tragedy. ”
The Saturday Paper
“ A cool appraisal of a hot issue...Hooper's account of the terrible crime that traumatised a community is even-handed and nuanced - so much so that, by the end of the book, it's difficult to discern where her sympathies lie: victims or accused? ”
The Guardian
“ In The Arsonist, Hooper reignites the memories of those cataclysmic events [of Black Saturday] with relentless, devastating effect. ”
Australian Book Review
“ Chloe Hooper’s The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire stokes the coals of a national tragedy almost a decade after it occurred, providing a hyper-detailed examination of how and why one man deliberately helped fan an inferno ... there turn out to be no easy answers. ”
The Australian
Audio Download
9780143792765
October 15, 2018
Penguin Random House Australia Audio
Trade Paperback
9780670078189
October 15, 2018
Hamish Hamilton
272 pages
Hardback
9780143795551
October 15, 2018
Hamish Hamilton
272 pages
EBook
9781743485521
October 15, 2018
Penguin eBooks
272 pages
Picture a fairytale’s engraving. Straight black trees stretching in perfect symmetry to their vanishing point, the ground covered in thick white snow. Woods are dangerous places in such stories, things are not as they seem. Here, too, in this timber plantation, menace lingers. The blackened trees smoulder. Smoke creeps around their charcoal trunks and charred leaves. The snow, stained pale grey, is ash. Place your foot unwisely and it might slip through and burn. These woods are cordoned off with crime scene tape and guarded by uniformed police officers.
At the intersection of two nondescript roads, Detective Sergeant Adam Henry sits in his car taking in a puzzle. On one side of Glendonald Road, the timber plantation is untouched: pristine Pinus radiata, all sown at the same time, growing in immaculate green lines. On the other side, near where the road forms a T with a track named Jellef’s Outlet, stand rows of Eucalyptus globulus, the common blue gum cultivated the world over to make printer paper. All torched, as far as the eye can see. On Saturday 7 February 2009, around 1.30 pm, a fire started somewhere near here and now, late on Sunday afternoon, it is still burning several kilometres away.
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