"All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Susan Mitchell. [review - radio script]

Abstract

Good versus Evil is the hook used to promote Susan Mitchell’s book "All Things Bright and Beautiful: Murder in the City of Light". Mitchell attended the trial of John Bunting and Robert Wagner, the two main perpetrators of the Snowtown killings, the worst serial murders in Australian history. She explores the role of social deprivation and endemic child abuse in the genesis of these particularly disgusting crimes. She wanted to find ‘the hidden underbelly to this city that I and many of its citizens either didn’t know about or simply refused to face.’ Mitchell’s thesis seems to be that Adelaide’s reaction to the Snowtown murders was denial.