Four days before Christmas in 1920, Dorothy Mort shot her lover dead in cold blood. The tragic end to her affair with dashing young doctor, cricket star and War hero, Dr Claude Tozer, scandalised Sydney. Dorothy's respectable husband was devastated. Following a trial that mesmerised the public and sent the media into a frenzy, the troubled North Shore mother of two and budding actress was declared 'not guilty on the ground of insanity'. After nine years in Long Bay Gaol, Dorothy was released and returned to live quietly with her husband . . . But was she really mad, or bad, or neither? And what was the secret that her husband kept for the rest of his life? In an absorbing blend of investigative non-fiction and biography, Suzanne Falkiner delves into the case that has intrigued Sydney for almost 100 years. 'Suzanne Falkiner's Mrs Mort's Madness is not a cricket book: it is a carefully assembled but highly readable account of a sensational crime. ... Nearly a century after it transfixed Sydney, Suzanne has at last rounded the story out.' - Gideon Haigh
Four days before Christmas in 1920, Dorothy Mort shot her lover dead in cold blood. The tragic end to her affair with dashing young doctor, cricket star and War hero, Dr Claude Tozer, scandalised Sydney. Dorothy’s respectable husband was devastated. Following a trial that mesmerised the public and sent the media into a frenzy, the troubled North Shore mother of two and budding actress was declared ‘not guilty on the ground of insanity’. After nine years in Long Bay Gaol, Dorothy was released and returned to live quietly with her husband . . . But was she really mad, or bad, or neither? And what was the secret that her husband kept for the rest of his life? In an absorbing blend of investigative non-fiction and biography, Suzanne Falkiner delves into the case that has intrigued Sydney for almost 100 years.
“'Suzanne Falkiner's Mrs Mort's Madness is not a cricket book: it is a carefully assembled but highly readable account of a sensational crime. ... Nearly a century after it transfixed Sydney, Suzanne has at last rounded the story out.' Gideon Haigh”
'Suzanne Falkiner’s Mrs Mort’s Madness is not a cricket book: it is a carefully assembled but highly readable account of a sensational crime. … Nearly a century after it transfixed Sydney, Suzanne has at last rounded the story out.' Gideon Haigh
Mrs Mort’s Madness comes with a skilled writer’s passion for impressive research and digging up a good yarn. Suzanne Falkiner has the right balance of fact, supposed history and storytelling enabling the characters to tell their side of the mystery in their own voice. A sizzler. -- Warren Fahey The Sydney Morning Herald
A valuable addition the genre of Australian true crime writing. -- Mark Tedeschi
Ultimately, Falkiner does not promote a particular view as to whether Ms Mort was actually "mad" at the time she killed her lover, or just ‘a woman spurned’. However, the options she raises with subtlety and sensitivity are tantalising, real questions about whether Ms Mort’s homicidal conduct was the result of psychotic illness or premeditatedly murderous behaviour, camouflaged by feigned mental illness. Mrs Mort’s Madness is absorbing reading for a rainy day. -- Ian Freckleton QC Psychiatry, Psychology and the Law
True crime stories are gripping, especially when the grisly details of the crime are matched by lashings of romance, passion and tragedy. Author Suzanne Falkiner combines the conventions of good investigative writing and biography with ‘imaginative reconstruction’ to create a captivating account of this true crime that examines the tragedy behind the headline-grabbing event. Thorough research enables her to draw rich and colourful portrayals of all the characters, mapping their interconnected and claustrophobic social connections and revealing the discreet decadence beneath the respectable social veneer. -- Kaye Donovan U: Magazine
Suzanne Falkiner is the author of twelve books of fiction and non-fiction. Her most recent titles include the biographies Joan in India (2008), The Imago: E. L. Grant Watson & Australia (2011), Mrs Mort’s Madness (2014) and Mick: A life of Randolph Stow (2016). She has been shortlisted for the Vogel Award, the Kibble Award, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, and the NSW History Awards. She lives in Sydney.
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