The Greatest Conman John Tamehere

The New Zealand Official Year-book

The Scene of the Crime

Twelve extraordinary tales of crime and punishment: a collection of true crime writing by New Zealand's award-winning master of non-fiction. A court is a chamber of questions. Who, when, why, what happened and exactly how -- these are issues of psychology and the soul, they're general to the human condition, with its infinite capacity to cause pain. A brutal murder of a wife and daughter ... A meth-fuelled Samurai sword attack ... A banker tangled in a hit-and-run scandal ... A top cop accused of rape ... A murder in the Outback ... A beloved entertainer's fall from grace ... In the hands of award-winning journalist and author Steve Braunias these and other extraordinary cases become more than just courtroom dramas and sensational headlines. They become a window onto another world -- the one where things go badly wrong, where once invisible lives become horrifyingly visible, where the strangeness just beneath the surface is revealed. Acutely observed, brilliantly written, and with the Mark Lundy case as its riveting centrepiece, this collection from the courts and criminal files of the recent past depicts a place we rarely enter, but which exists all around us.

Hard Cases

A fascinating, hard-hitting and revealing true crime book by the producer-director of The Investigator, the six-part TVNZ series that sceened to rave reviews and high ratings in late 2007. Did David Tamihere murder the Swedish tourists on his own? Who killed Kirsty Bentley? Why has the man who murdered Kayo Matsuzawa not been arrested? Is John Barlow innocent? And are mass murderers like David Gray natural-born killers? Or do we create them? Award-winning author and documentary maker Bryan Bruce combines his skills as an investigative journalist with his training as a social scientist and logician to re-examine some of the most debated and perplexing cases of our time. His clear-eyed investigations take the reader beyond the fascination with stories of true crime and spares no one in his pursuit of the truth. Did the police get the right man? Did they bungle some investigations, or - worse - did they make decisions that undermined the integrity of our policing and our justice system? The cases Bruce explores in this gripping collection reveals deep and disturbing flaws that lead him to a conclusion that challenges us all: Are we willing to learn from the hard cases in this book and make changes to our criminal justice system? Or are we happy to live with a status quo that sometimes lets evil prevail?