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ABC Arts book critic Declan Fry described The Mushroom Tapes as a “monster of a true-crime book”. (Supplied: Text)<\/p>\n
That day in May, the authors and friends were en route to the trial of the now notorious Erin Patterson, convicted in September<\/a> of using death cap mushrooms to murder her estranged husband’s mother, father and aunt in July 2023.<\/p>\n A book that transcribes the conversations between Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein has just won the prize for non-fiction at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs).<\/p>\n The Mushroom Tapes sees the authors weighing up the evidence, guessing at Patterson’s motivations, and sharing their observations of people and events, both in and outside court.<\/p>\n More than just an account of the trial that inspired countless podcasts, books and even a TV drama, The Mushroom Tapes is an insight into how three authors think and write, and why they and audiences are so fascinated with true crime.<\/p>\n “None of us wants to write about this,” they write. “And none of us wants not to write about it.”<\/p>\n In November, Garner \u2014 known for her true-crime books This House of Grief and Joe Cinque’s Consolation \u2014 admitted on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live<\/a> she wasn’t especially interested at first in going to Morwell to cover the mushroom murders.<\/p>\n She had recently published The Season, a book about her grandson’s AFL team<\/a>, when Hooper and Krasnostein suggested she join them at the trial.<\/p>\n “I thought, well, that could be fun. That could be interesting. Because a writer’s life is quite lonely and solitary usually.<\/p>\n “I thought I might have fun and talk to some other writers and crack a few jokes and find an interesting story.”<\/p>\n Geraldine Brooks on ‘the business of mourning’<\/a><\/p>\n Three years after the sudden death of her husband, author Geraldine Brooks retreated to Flinders Island to do the work of grief.<\/p>\n Among the other winners at the ABIAs, presented in Sydney on May 21, were Geraldine Brooks’s memoir, Memorial Days<\/a>, about her grief at the loss of her husband, which won the biography award; and Zeno Sworder’s Once I Was a Giant, a book narrated by a tree, won both Book of the Year and best children’s picture book.<\/p>\n Sally Hepworth’s latest novel Mad Mabel, about the (fictional) youngest Australian to be convicted of murder, won both best audiobook and best general fiction; while Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore<\/a>, about a mysterious woman washing up on a remote island near Antarctica, won the award for literary fiction.<\/p>\n Jump to the full list of Australian Book Industry Award winners<\/a>Finding the detail<\/p>\n In 2023, Nagi Maehashi won the top prize at the ABIAs for her cookbook RecipeTin Eats: Dinner.<\/p>\n A new novel imagines what we will sacrifice to the climate crisis<\/a><\/p>\n Charlotte McConaghy’s latest novel, Wild Dark Shore, is a propulsive literary thriller set in one of the world’s most remote and rugged locations.<\/p>\n The book remains a bestseller in Australia: It was the second most popular adult non-fiction book last year, selling 128,000 copies, bested only by her latest book RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (an ABIA winner in 2025).<\/p>\n Eerily the book also appears in The Mushroom Tapes as Krasnostein mentions the copy of RecipeTin Eats: Dinner on Patterson’s kitchen counter “with its food-spattered beef Wellington recipe on page 252”.<\/p>\n On Instagram in July, after the jury found Patterson guilty, Maehashi wrote: “It is of course upsetting to learn that one of my recipes \u2014 perhaps the one I’ve spent more hours perfecting than any other \u2014 something that I created to bring joy and happiness, is entangled in this tragic situation.”<\/p>\n Speaking to Late Night Live, Garner described the page of the cookbook as part of the “cataract of fabulous detail” you can find in a court.<\/p>\n Patterson leaving court after being sentenced to life in prison in September. (AAP: Joel Carrett)<\/p>\n “The things that I notice in a court, I could never squeeze into one book,” she said. “Because there’s so many of them, [like the] thousands of little tiny power struggles between the people in the gallery or the little struggle you go through every day on the way through security.”<\/p>\n They’re the kinds of details Garner has always had an eye for \u2014 whether in her debut novel Monkey Grip or in her diaries, which won her the Baillie Gifford last year.<\/p>\n “I’m trying to remain open to them because they’re always there,” Garner said.<\/p>\n “When I was young and I had vague ideas that maybe I might like to write something one day, I used to think that I wouldn’t be able to, because it seemed to me that I was surrounded always by this sea of tiny details and I thought that’s not what you need to write a book.<\/p>\n “But as the years went by, I realised what treasures they were and how there are ways that you can use them and they serve themselves to you.”<\/p>\n Writing about court<\/p>\n![\"Erin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/04051c714090298ac6c0ff9b04634b55.jpeg\")
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