The Mushroom Tapes

Like a lot of people, I was mesmerised (somewhat against my will) by the Erin Patterson case, in which Patterson poisoned her in-laws and her estranged husband's aunt and uncle with death cap mushrooms in a Beef Wellington. Something about the bizarre horror of the crime combined the intimate, domestic, relatable setting of a lunch party with relatives was irresistibly fascinating. Plus friends of mine lived for several years in Korumburra, where the victims all came from, so I have a feel for the geography.

Marry the subject matter with three of my favourite Australian non-fiction writers in Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, and you'll understand why I was so impatient for The Mushroom Tapes. It's a pretty loose format: the three writers discuss the court case, often in the car on the long drive to and from Morwell, or over a bakery lunch during breaks in the proceedings. They have all written about crime, they are all interested in what they call 'the rent in the social fabric' that murder creates, they are all curious about why Patterson did what she did, and in the character and demeanour of the witnesses -- not just Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor of the lunch, or Simon, Erin's ex-husband, who was also invited (and, as we learned after the trial, had been the victim of poisoning attempts by Erin previously), but by the police and doctors and forensic experts who give service to the justice system by giving evidence.

All three women fret about their own motives, as well as speculating about Patterson's. Are they really superior to the gleeful gawkers who fill the courtroom day after day, the jostling photographers, the media scrum that fills the motels of the town? They talk about 'bearing witness,' but perhaps at the end of the day they really are no more honourable than someone like me who dashed out to buy this book to find out if they had any insights that I hadn't come up with myself, to chew over the banal grudges and passionate resentments that might lead someone to kill, to wonder if I could ever act that way. What separates Patterson from the rest of us? This is the fundamental question that Garner, Krasnostein and Hooper come back to again and again, and while it's fascinating and intriguing to see what they make of it, in the end they can't answer that question any more than I can.