AustLit

'In 1930-31, the worthy citizens of Melbourne were gripped by a brutal and depraved unsolved murder that filled the tabloids. Mollie Dean, a 25-year-old special education teacher, was sexually assaulted and killed in an Elwood laneway on her way home after an evening at the theatre with friends. Dean was sexy, beautiful and ambitious; a poet, aspiring novelist and artists’ model, and a mistress of Colin Colahan, a prominent Melbourne painter. In this latest addition to his true crime oeuvre, Melbourne journalist and polymath Gideon Haigh attempts to uncover Dean’s life as well as her death.' (Introduction)