The Stained Man (A Crime, a Scandal, and the Making of Australia)

Attempted murder, lies, legal and political backdoor dealings, this work of historical true crime—“A two-volume mystery!” Mark Twain called it—brings to life the riveting story of Australia’s most notorious scandal.

Sydney, 1895. Richard Meagher is a brilliant criminal defense solicitor with ambitions in politics. He takes on the case of George Dean, a handsome, popular ferryman accused of attempting to poison his own wife. The evidence pointing to Dean’s guilt is damning, but, in Dean’s protests of innocence and the clamor of public support, Meagher senses a great opportunity is at hand—until it all blows up in his face.

Determined to recover his reputation and vindicate his actions, Meagher begins a twenty-five-year quest to rewrite the ‘Dean case’ and reclaim all he has lost. That quest will put him in the glare of public scrutiny, arouse enemies at every turn, propel him to high political office, and entwine his cause with the making of the Australian nation.

In a work of true crime with a twist, moving from sordid Sydney streets to the corridors of parliament, and spanning the critical years of Australia’s history in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, The Stained Man tells the riveting story of a sensational scandal—and of how an indelible stain was eventually expunged.