Renowned writer Helen Garner to co-author book on mushroom murders trial

Helen Garner, one of the country’s most revered writers, is to co-author a book about Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.

Writer Helen Garner. Picture: Darren James

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One of the country’s most revered writers, Helen Garner, is to co-author a book about Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial, the veteran author’s publisher, Text Publishing, has revealed.

Garner, a novelist who has also written best-selling nonfiction titles including The First Stone and This House of Grief, will collaborate on a book called The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations about a Triple Murder Trial, with other award-winning true crime writers Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Sarah Krasnostein (The Trauma Cleaner).

Garner had been spotted at the Morwell courthouse in rural Victoria during Patterson’s trial, and Text announced on Thursday that “for this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.

“ … They explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains unknowable about Erin Patterson.’’

Patterson, who was this week found guilty of murdering three members of her estranged husband’s family and of attempting to murder a fourth member with a beef Wellington dish containing death cap mushrooms, has already spawned a cottage industry of books, screen productions and podcasts.

The Mushroom Tapes is to be published in November – the same month in which Allen & Unwin plans to publish a rival, nonfiction book by Underbelly creator Greg Haddrick.

Allen & Unwin said Haddrick’s book would include details “not previously published” and would be “the compelling story of a troubled family and a poisonous mushroom that is readily found in parks and gardens’’.

A third publisher, Hachette, will release Recipe for Murder, by crime writer and former detective Duncan McNab, in October. Hachette said Recipe for Murder would offer “an in-depth look into the nine-week trial, offering unmatched insight into the key evidence, the legal strategy and the emotional toll of a case that gripped the nation and captured global attention’’.

Before Patterson’s trial had concluded, the ABC announced that well-known showrunner Tony Ayres, creator of seminal miniseries The Slap, would work on a drama called Toxic about the Patterson case, while streaming platform Stan will air a documentary about the triple murders that examines “how one lethal lunch can shatter the myth of small-town security in Australia’’.