To get away with murder takes a bit of skill or a lot of good luck. Sometimes it takes large bribes to divert the attention of investigating cops.
In this gripping trilogy, award-winning true crime author Tony Reeves tells how three people literally got away with murder. It is an unusual twist to the murder mystery genre: here Reeves tells us 'who dunnit' and how they walked away scott free.
These stories have evaded the attention of serious true crime writers to date and are told here for the first time, filling a few gaps in the darker side of Australia's history.
Book Review/s to share:
Terrific Read 23 Mar 2009 by Joseph Perrone
If you're a fan of Dominick Dunn's writing, you'll love Tony Reeves' new book, Getting Away With Murder. It's the kind of fast-paced crime journal that makes great reading when your time is at a premium. Squeeze in a chapter here, a few paragraphs there. It just keeps rolling along - like a good crime book should. Enjoy!
Joe Perrone Jr. Author of As the Twig is Bent (a mystery thriller) and Escaping Innocence (a coming-of-age tale set in the '60s)
Getting Away With Murder 6 Feb 2009 by Barry Ward
Tony Reeves knows more about Sydney crime than the local coppers, even those he has investigated over the years.
So it comes as no surprise that he has solved crimes that proved beyond the collective skills of the finest police force that money can buy.
Tony has chronicled murder and mayhem, Sydney's principal industry, for four decades and has out-lived most of the practitioners of the trade he writes about so eloquently. He's always been "a good read" -- illuminating, entertaining, authoritative, controversial --and here he's done it again.
"Getting Away With Murder" is required reading for those with a conscience, who care about their city, particularly those at Police HQ and others with something to hide...
When Nelllie McPherson reached her eightieth year, her clan got together to give the sprightly grandmother a birthday bash. Her youngest son, Lennie, wasn't invited. He turned up, nevertheless, with a small white rabbit. Instead of giving it to his mother, Lennie put one large hand around the rabbit's neck, grasped its head, twisted and pulled and, in a splash of blood, ripped the poor animal's head off. He threw the twitching remains at a horrified Nellie. This was someone who never forgave.
Meet Lennie McPherson, the man who became known as the Mr Big of Australian crime. Brutality punctuated his whole life. Corruption was his mark. He was a standover man, a murderer, a rapist and a thief. He ran crooked police and corrupt politicians. And he did business with the Mafia and the CIA. In this chilling portrait of the godfather of Australian crime, Tony Reeves uncovers a heart of evil and takes us deep into the dark and violent criminal underworld. It is a story that could only be told after Lennie's death.
Book Review/s to share: Reeves has worked hard on this book. He creates a world which has a disturbing similarity to the New Jersey depicted in 'The Sopranos', and describes crimes in such detail you almost feel as though he were there. This is the cliff hardy story that Peter Corris has been trying to write for decades ... and it's all true. (Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald).
Abe Saffron was one of Australia's most notorious and powerful crime figures. Yet he spent his life denying any involvement in criminal activity, claiming he was just a successful businessman. Sydney knew otherwise. This was the man who controlled the city's underworld with an iron fist.
Tony Reeves has been gathering information on Abe Saffron for more than forty years. With Saffron's death in September 2006, he can finally and safely reveal all. And what a story it is. Saffron trafficked in drugs, ran prostitution and gambling rings, was not averse to extreme violence and was a master of bribery and a corruptor of police, politicians and the judiciary. The man with a voracious sexual appetite was a real-life Godfather of Australian crime.
Mr Sin makes for shocking and disturbing reading. It reveals the heart of a vicious world of greed and evil and leaves no doubt that Abe Saffron well and truly deserved the moniker 'Mr Sin'.
Book Review/s to share: Tony Reeves has reported on crime for decades. He knows Sydney's underworld as Ian Rankin knows Edinburgh and he has the same ability to capture the sleaziness with an insider's intimacy. This is a wonderful evocation of a city that has now all but disappeared. (Bruce Edler, Sydney Morning Herald.)
THERE can be no doubt that when John Trevor Kelly took an axe and brutally killed Connie Sommerlad in northern New South Wales town of Tenterfield early in 1939, there would be profound political repercussions, for his victim was the niece of a powerful State politician and local media baron.
But while the political heavyweight was totally opposed to capital punishment on religious and moral grounds, his conservative political allies in the state parliament acted as though they ‘owed him one’ and were determined to wreak revenge against the wretched Kelly for his abominable act, despite the fact the state had consciously stopped executing people more than a year earlier. So the hanging of Jack Kelly was a very political execution indeed.
Book Review/s to share: ------------------- “This represents a fantastic piece of meticulous research, and it is a great story of course. – Richard Walsh, publishing consultant, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
In the pantheon of contemporary crime writing Tony Reeves has no equal in Australia. He is a walking encyclopedia on the subject of corrupt politicians, bent coppers and their mates in the criminal fraternity. Nothing escapes his eagle eye and his enquiring mind.
Add an engaging writing style and meticulous research and the result is becoming a reference library to what may be Australia's major industry.
He's been actively engaged thus for some four decades, so he's no "flash in the pan" although he achieved national recognition only recently with his ground-breaking books on Lennie McPherson and Abe Saffron, the Mr Big and Mr Sin of Sydney's crime scene. He followed those award-winning tomes with Getting Away With Murder, the first of a monumental trilogy, and he's done it again with his latest opus Two Political Murders. This is the story of axe murderer Jack Kelly, the last man to be hanged in New South Wales, whose execution proved to be another exercise in political chicanery that is the norm thereabouts. Hence the title.
It's a fascinating and colourful tale of the times with detail that will delight those who appreciate the finer points of such vital literary application. The case dates to 1939 but Tony's reportage gives it a sense of the contemporary. It might have happened yesterday.
This is another landmark in the Reeves' lexicon, a classical expose of crime and consequence that should be read by all who value the craft of crime writing and the recounting of a gripping story whose implications reverberate to the present day. – Review by Barry Ward. Email to share: rlg@eis.net.au
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![Mr. Big [Lennie McPherson] - Tony Reeves](../images/100_Mr_Big.jpg)
