Lawyer X, Anthony Dowsley
Lawyer X, Anthony Dowsley
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Lawyer X

Author: Anthony Dowsley, Patrick Carlyon

Narrator: Abbe Holmes

Unabridged: 14 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/07/2020


Synopsis

Underbelly meets Molly's Game - the true crime investigation that rewrote the story of Melbourne's infamous gangland war and triggered a royal commission.
Melbourne's gangland war was an era dominated by murders, stings, hits, drug busts, corruption and greed - inspiring bestselling books and even a popular TV series, Underbelly. It took the police a decade to curtail the violence and bring down criminal kingpins Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel and their accomplices. When the police finally closed the case file, just how they really won the war, with the help of an unlikely police informer, would become a closely guarded secret and its exposure, the biggest legal scandal of our time.Lawyer X is the scandalous, true story of how a promising defence barrister from a privileged background broke all the rules - becoming both police informer and her client's lover - sharing their secrets and shaping the gangland war that led to sensational arrests and convictions. The story of how Nicola Gobbo became Lawyer X, and why, is a compelling study in desperation and determination.Lawyer X is the definitive story of Melbourne's gangland wars and its most glamorous and compelling central character, based on the ground-breaking work of investigative journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, who broke the story for the Herald Sun in 2014, and their five-year struggle to reveal the truth about the identity of Lawyer X.

About Anthony Dowsley

Anthony Dowsley has been a crime reporter with the Herald Sun since 2004. He has covered unsolved homicides, law and order issues and police corruption. He broke the Lawyer X story in 2014, despite court action by Victoria Police. He is recognised as the driving force for subsequent Lawyer X inquiries, culminating in the royal commission into police informants, which began in 2019. He was recognised for both these investigations with the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award in 2019.

About Patrick Carlyon

Patrick Carlyon has been a senior features writer at the Herald Sun for a decade. He has won two Walkley Awards for feature writing: one for his coverage of the Black Saturday fires, the other for his account of a war medic in Afghanistan. He and Anthony Dowsley shared the Gold Quill award, among other awards, from the Melbourne Press Club in 2018 for their investigation into Nicola Gobbo.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Matty on December 12, 2020

I was really keen to understand the story of Nicola Gobbo being a lawyer & police informer, but this book was frustrating! Firstly, it felt too long - and it wasn’t even that long. Secondly, the story is SO convoluted & really hard to keep track of all the players (not the fault of the authors - they......more

Goodreads review by Jen on September 14, 2020

This is a fascinating and definitive account of a bizarre episode in Australia's legal history. It must have been quite a feat for the journalists to untangle the thousands of threads of the story, which they provide alongside helpful analysis. We await the outcome of the royal commission with inter......more

Goodreads review by Books.and.brews_ on December 24, 2020

Without knowing too much about the gangland wars in Melbourne I was interested to learn more through this book. With a large number of characters involved it took me a while to grasp who was who (the authors have put character details at the start of the book which made for quick and easy reference)......more