Gone for a Song: A Death in Custody on Palm Island (Jeff Waters, ABC Books, $24.95 tpb, ISBN 9780733322167, May) ****

The events that followed the death in custody of Mulrunji in Palm Island in 2004 became one of the more incendiary moments in Queensland politics of the last decade. Arrested on flimsy grounds, thrown into a paddy wagon and into custody, Mulrunji died of wounds consistent with a severe trauma. Events seem to hinge on a fall up the stairs of the Palm Island police station which involved Mulrunji and senior seargeant Chris Hurley crashing to the floor. Witness accounts are muddled and unclear. Mulrunji was subsequently thrown into a cell, with little attention, where he died later that evening.
The ensuing police investigation was procedurally inept and cursory at best, which led to claims of a cover-up and a riot in the Palm Island community. Jeff Walters covers all these events and the subsequent inquests and investigations with forensic care. His is a sobering account, reconstructing events with patience and attention to detail and letting each step of the process reveal its consequences in full. That the book is able to do this while wearing its heart on its sleeve and barely suppressing its simmering anger is a testament to the skill with which the story is presented.

Shane Strange is a bookseller at Paperchain Bookstore in Canberra

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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