Favourite quote from the book: "We have to use our freedoms and privileges to see what respite we can give to those less equipped to deal with their challenges." - Andrew Boe, Brisbane criminal lawyer.
About the story: Palm Island may be the most beautiful tropical island in Australia, but its name is synonymous with violence.
It is home to one of the country's largest Aboriginal communities, descendants of people torn from their own lands, their clans and their families in the era of the Stolen Generation.
In 2004, Cameron Doomadgee, a 36-year-old resident of the island, was arrested for swearing at a white police officer and locked in the cells. Within forty minutes he was dead.
The police claimed he'd tripped on a step, but his injuries were consistent with a car or plane crash.
The community rioted and burnt down the police station.
The main suspect was Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley, a tall, handsome, charismatic cop with long experience in Aboriginal communities and decorations for his work.
Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island recounts this story with the pace of a thriller.
Following Hurley's trail to some of the wildest and most remote parts of Australia, she explores Aboriginal myths and history and uncovers buried secrets of white mischief.
Atmospheric, gritty and original, The Tall Man is an absorbing and moving account of the lives of the people of Palm Island, of the Doomadgee family as they struggle to understand what happened to their brother, and of the complex, enigmatic Hurley as he fights the charge of manslaughter.
Hooper combines reportage with a novelist's command of character to tell a story that takes readers not only inside the courtroom and the notorious Queensland police force, but into Australia's indigenous communities - and to the heart of a struggle for power, revenge and justice.
About the author: Chloe Hooper was born in 1973. Her highly praised first novel, A Child's Book of True Crime (2002), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her Observer article about the Doomadgee case, "Island of Lost Souls", was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Media Awards.
The Tall Man was awarded the
1) 2008 Western Australia's Premier Book Awards, Overall Prize Winner, Non-fiction category
2) 2009 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards - Douglas Stewart Prize, Non-fiction category
3) 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Award - Nettie Palmer Prize, Non-fiction category
4) 2009 Indie Book Awards, shortlisted
A reader's review of The Tall Man.
"The book is everything it should be: a sad, beautiful, frightening account of one man's pointless death, interwoven with the brutal history of Palm Island and a golden thread of Aboriginal mythology. Every sentence is weighty, considered, even, restrained. Every character is explored for their contradictions, every situation observed for its nuances, every easy judgement suspended... It is The Tall Man's triumph that Hooper finds the common humanity in the accused and the accuser, the police officer and the street drinker, the living and the dead." - Mark Dapin, Good Weekend Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald/Age
As this is a book of reportage, there will be no rating.
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