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kathleenes's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
Brisbane has an interesting history and I am enjoying finding out about it through this series. Although at times it is hard to follow due to all the names mentioned.
jm_donellan's review against another edition
5.0
A must read for anyone even remotely interested in QLD history and/or true crime. I'm not usually a fan of true crime but I found this utterly beguiling.
frumpleton's review against another edition
5.0
The only bit of Brisbane history that's genuinely interesting. I love how the corrupt as hell Commissioner Lewis was the central interviewee and provided all his documents as well, which only served to provide more evidence of the horrible police state. He manages to be a good paper-rustler too, covering up all the corruption to the point where he was seeing off an investigation into the police force nearly every year. Then as icing on the cake he directly implicates his closest collaborator, Tony Murphy, and then in the same breath removes himself from being a key player in three decades of graft and fostering a serious criminal underworld in Brisbane for police's financial gain.
becleighton's review against another edition
5.0
This is a brilliant, gripping and incredibly important book. It shines a light on an extremely ugly chapter of modern Australian history and does an absolutely fantastic job out of documenting and explaining the huge web of police, political and judicial corruption and organised crime that went on under (but went far beyond) Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Terry Lewis.
Condon's ability to get people with actual knowledge to speak on the record and the depth of his research is amazing. I've found in some of his other books that Condon can be a bit of a plodding writer, but his avoidance of sensationalism is brilliant here as he just lets the huge amount of genuinely damning material he's gathered carry its own weight.
This was a hugely eye-opening read - even if you already know a bit about this stuff, and very much worth reading.
Condon's ability to get people with actual knowledge to speak on the record and the depth of his research is amazing. I've found in some of his other books that Condon can be a bit of a plodding writer, but his avoidance of sensationalism is brilliant here as he just lets the huge amount of genuinely damning material he's gathered carry its own weight.
This was a hugely eye-opening read - even if you already know a bit about this stuff, and very much worth reading.
adslimq2's review against another edition
1.0
Unreadable. Just a jumble of dates, guesses, reconstructed conversations, and names. No or little effort made to explain or interpret events.
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