Joe Cinque's Consolation

A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law
The prizewinning true story of death, grief and the law, from the winner of the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder.

Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died.

A prizewinning masterwork from one of Australia's greatest writers, Joe Cinque's Consolation probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability and the battered ideal of duty of care.

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