Recommendations

Every Parent’s Nightmare has received recommendations from across the Australian legal profession.

Nicholas Cowdery AM QC

‘I commend this book.  I think it’s a very fine piece of investigatory journalism.’

Julian Burnside AO QC

‘Wrong place, wrong time, wrong person. The horrifying story of what went wrong for Jock Palfreeman when he was just trying to help a stranger.’

Tom Percy QC

‘Jock Palfreeman seems desperately unlucky to be convicted. In Australia, the evidence against him would have struggled to support (at worst) a verdict of manslaughter and a sentence of probably less than the time that he has already served.

His plight might well have remained in obscurity, but then an insightful journalist with the ABC’s Australian Story, Belinda Hawkins, provided a detailed investigation into the case.’

Peter Morrissey SC

‘ Her method is quite different to the method that’s usually used in the true crime genre.  It’s facts based: facts before flourishes at all times. This is not a domineering book. It does have a strong sense of injustice that Belinda pulls together at the end, but throughout she lets the characters speak. You can see their stories but their stories don’t co-opt everything. It’s a marked contrast to what happened in the trial.’

Greg Barns

‘Every Parent’s Nightmare is a class above many other books in this genre.  It is subtle, it is moving, it is probing, and above all it lets the reader exercise his her judgment.’