Cirrus@Austlit

'A gripping and shocking story of a serial killer mother, and the brave daughter who brought her to justice.

'Dulcie Bodsworth was the unlikeliest serial killer. She was loved everywhere she went, and the townsfolk of Wilcannia, which she called home in the late 1950s, thought of her as kind and caring. The officers at the local police station found Dulcie witty and charming, and looked forward to the scones and cakes she generously baked and delivered for their morning tea.

'That was one side of her. Only her daughter Hazel saw the real Dulcie. And what she saw terrified her.

'Dulcie was in fact a cold, calculating killer who, by 1958, had put three men in their graves - one of them the father of her four children, Ted Baron - in one of the most infamous periods of the state's history. She would have got away with it all had it not been for Hazel.

'Written by award-winning journalist Janet Fife-Yeomans together with Hazel Baron, My Mother, A Serial Killer is both an evocative insight into the harshness of life on the fringes of Australian society in the 1950s, and a chilling story of a murderous mother and the courageous daughter who testified against her and put her in jail.' (Publication Summary)

'When the phone rings in the middle of the night, it is usually bad news. When the phone rings in the middle of the night and you are the State Coroner, it is invariably someone else's bad news ... In this compelling book we travel with State Coroner Derrick Hand behind the scenes of his investigations and discover how he pieced together the puzzles thrown up by suspicious deaths and helped bring some of Australia's most notorious murderers to justice. The Coroner offers insights into forensic science, the workings of the court and criminal justice system, and the high-profile inquiries into the deaths of Roni Levi, Anita Cobby and Michael Hutchence; as well as the Newcastle earthquake, the Down Under Hostel Fire and the Sydney Hilton Bombing'

Source: publisher's blurb