Richard Laymon Same Vein

RATING:

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Review Source:

DEATH AT BONDI by Darren Goodsir

French photographer, Roni Levi appeared to go mad on a cold winter's Saturday in 1997 on Bondi Beach in Sydney. Before an audience numbering in the hundreds, Levi was shot by two NSW police officers. Shot dead. He had a knife, but nothing else. The cafe and beach users of Bondi were stunned at the brutality, and almost immediately, questions began to be asked.

After the public outcry, the court hearings that followed began to dig up more than anyone expected. Mostly about the sordid and murky lives of the two Bondi police officers involved in the killings. We're talking booze, drugs and more. And their buddies in the Force who would do anything to make this story go away.

Goodsir is a long-time Sydney crime reporter, police commissioner's minder and lawyer who knows his stuff. He's got the contacts and he knows where to dig to bring the truth of this story to light. Goodsir has combed the thousands of documents on the public record about the death, amassed during the inquest, court hearing and two Police Integrity Commission inquiries in the form of transcripts, witness statements and phone taps. It's all here. And it's not pretty. It will have many readers wondering about the boys in blue in NSW.

Goodsir's style is tiring at times and padded at others; lacking a good editor, it seems. Some material appears to have been added just because it's official and not because it's important.

But, in the end, it's a damning indictment on an incident at Bondi that should never have happened.

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