NEW hardcover

The Shark Net Drewe, Robert

When he was six years old, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to the west Australian coast, to grow up by the sea and sand dunes around Perth, said to be the worlds most isolated city and proud of it This sunbaked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquility and friendlinessThen a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew The murderer randomly killed eight strangers variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning, and hacking his victims and running them down with cars and innocent Perth was changed foreverIn the middleclass waterside suburbs that were the killers main stalking grounds, the mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and instant local myth Many people were deeply affected, not least the young Robert Drewe The murders and their aftermath have both intrigued me and weighed heavily on me for three decades They were the pivotal events of my youth for the reason that they were inextricably entwined with events in my own family To try to make sense of this time and place, and of my own childhood and adolescence, I had, finally, to write about it