It appears there are an enormous amount of criminals lurking that as everyday law-abiding citizens we don't come across. In Life & Crimes the author he has just scratched the surface with these eighteen crime stories that have caused outrage and fuelled fear. Andrew Rule is a podcaster these days and has a huge following, which he estimates is around a million regular listeners.

The book title Life & Crimes  takes its  name from the podcast and its well written conversational style makes it quite riveting reading.

He chooses to write each chapter about one criminal or one type of crime. The crimes and criminals are varied from armed bank robberies to hired gunmen to kidnappers. Some are torturers, sex offenders to waterfront union officials to bent cops, an execution-style shooting, the chilling assault on the freedom of women, the suspicions between crime and cops and everything in-between.It is quite eye-opening.

The book delves into each case, laying out all the details taken from the records and from interviews he has conducted with the crims or from members of their families or witnesses, amazingly some of which were not questioned at the time of the crimes.

Lives & Crimes includes accounts of an enormous amount of inept policing over the years or can this be put down to police corruption? ... You decide.

In one of the twetnty-two chapters, Rule discusses the lingering story about the Beaumont children’s abduction on Australia Day, 1966, from Glenelg beach, Adelaide and sifts through several of the suspects that could be responsible for the children’s disappearance… the abductors nor th children have never been found. 

Another fascinating story is about a would-be Union President in Melbourne’s docks. A would be, because after the vote, in 1970, the ballot box was stolen and all the ballot papers were burned. However, in comparison to his friends, colleagues and cohorts, he lived to the ripe old age of eighty years, predominantly because of his reputation. 

The author discusses, at length, the murder of a Melbourne detective’s sister-in-law and documents the first coronial inquest and then the second, twenty years later. This second inquest is presented in fine detail and leads to a verdict that should have come to light during the first inquest.Interesting indeed.

This is such an interesting book filled with incredible accounts about some of the worst crimes that I found it difficult to put the book down and finished reading it in record time.It is a terrific book for anyone who enjoys reading about true crime and even those who don’t. What I call an unputdownable.

Reviewed by Ken.

The Author

Andrew Rule has been telling true stories for more than 45 years. He started as a reporter in a Victorian country newspaper in the 1970s and went on to work for some of Australia's biggest news publications: The Age, the Melbourne Herald, The Herald Sun and a national magazine. He is known for writing about crime and its detection but has also covered global events from the Olympics to the Christchurch earthquake, a Papua New Guinea military coup, the Bali nightclub bombing and Japan's catastrophic tsunami. He has written and co-written many books ranging across subjects from horseracing to serious biographies, but most often about crime. He is currently an associate editor with News Corp