Frank & Fearless

When I walked through the office door each day, I knew that almost every decision I made would make someone unhappy… In Frank and Fearless Nicholas Cowdery QC takes us behind the scenes of the toughest cases that defined his 16 years as the Director of Public Prosecutions for New South Wales. The headline-grabbing criminal trials of Gordon Wood, Keli Lane and Christopher Gilham (tried for the 1992 murder of his brother and parents) are examined with forensic precision, along with the DPP’s contentious decisions not to prosecute artist Bill Henson and members of The Chaser. During his tenure, Cowdery was also well-known for his support for realistic drug and death with dignity laws, and for the need to decriminalise abortion. Frank and Fearless is a gripping and forthright account of the most difficult decisions Nicholas Cowdery had to make during his time as a gatekeeper of the criminal justice system.