JUST ANOTHER LITTLE MURDER

Author - Phil Cleary

Publisher - Allen and Unwin

At the heart of Phil Cleary's book is a passionate man's determination to honour the life of his murdered sister. Vicki was a young woman from a close and loving family, murdered by a former defacto, who pleaded provocation and was convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter.

He resubmits to public scrutiny some of the evidence that led to the verdict, a verdict that firstly stunned and ultimately shattered both the author and his family. By thorough and painstaking research of court and police records and by personal interviews he uncovers evidence that should have been submitted and wasn't.

In the process he documents the life and ultimate death of an habitual and violent criminal. But this book is not just an attempt to gain retrospective justice for a sister slain and then dishonoured by the system. It is as well, a searing indictment of a judicial system that institutionalises injustice. It is an unashamedly class based critique of a judiciary that fails all women who are the victims of sexual assault, but particularly the poor and the powerless.

It portrays a brotherhood of judges and lawyers, responsible for the dispensation of justice to victims of sexual assault, who are crippled by the class and gender based assumptions that drive them and by their own class backgrounds.

It is a book that resonates with the profanity of the streets, the bourgeois platitudes of the courts and the menace of the police cells. It contains language as warm as a mother's caress and as cold and detached as a forensic report.

"Just another little murder" is a moving tribute to a beloved family member. It is a beautifully crafted and unreservedly honest account from a passionate and civilized man of a murder, that begins at the point of a singular injustice and expands to the plane of systemic injustice. It will have many in the judicial system hanging their heads in shame.

So it should.

Brian Sanaghan
B.Sc (Hons) Melbourne University
B.Ed.

Brian Sanaghan was a Northcote Municipal Councillor between 1977-1980.
He is a close friend of the author.