Co-written with Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, The Mushroom Tapes is inspired by their experience attending the headline-grabbing trial earlier this year
Helen Garner, one of Australia’s most acclaimed authors, is set to publish a new book in November about the Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial.
The book follows the story of Patterson, an Australian woman convicted in July of murdering three of her former in-laws and attempting to murder a fourth by serving them a beef wellington contaminated with death cap mushrooms in 2023. The case, which played out in an Australian court earlier this year, attracted global attention.
The Mushroom Tapes, written with fellow Australian authors Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, will be published by Text Publishing on 11 November in Australia and W&N in the UK on 20 November. The case has already inspired a television special, a forthcoming ABC drama series and several documentaries.
Prosecutors alleged that Patterson, a mother and self-described true crime enthusiast, invited her estranged husband’s parents, Gail and Don Patterson, and Gail’s sister and brother-in-law, Heather and Ian Wilkinson, to lunch at her Victoria home in July 2023. Within days, three of the guests were dead and the fourth lay in a coma.
