Bibliography and References

For a case which has become part of Australian folklore, it is astonishing how little there is by way of information about the case. Sharpe's book is reissued periodically under slightly different titles, eg "The Giant Book of Crimes that Shocked Australia" and "Crime and Punishment: Crimes that Shocked Australia." It is a useful starting reference.

Alan Dower's "Deadline", Jack Ayling's "Nothing But The Truth" and Tom Prior's "The Sinners' Club" are all autobiographies of Melbourne journalists. Dower's "Deadline" has a strange writing style but contains pictures and a lot of information that I haven't found elsewhere. Ayling's "Nothing But The Truth" is much more conventional than Dower's work, and the information that it contains on the case is little different from that in Sharpe's book, except that it contains a little more detail in places, and also details of some unsubstantiated possible sightings of the children. Prior's "The Sinners' Club" is much the same.

"Underbelly 5" is one of the "Underbelly" series by crime journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule, both of the Melbourne Age newspaper. The chapter titled "The Invisible Man", about Arthur Stanley Brown, was used extensively for the page on this site about Brown. The "Underbelly" series are true crime books, generally about crimes that have been committed in Melbourne. They publish a book in November each year, November 2005's book being "Underbelly 9".

Hall's "Wanted" is hard to find, but contains a better series of pictures about the Beaumont and other cases than any of the other works. The details of the Mackay sisters murders featured on this site are mostly derived from this book.

The other books listed are "Australian Crime" and "Where Were You When". "Australian Crime" does not have much information about the case and so I could not recommend it as particularly useful. It was however a convenient reference when I began constructing this site, which is why it features on this bibliography.

"Where Were You When" is a coffee-table book from which I used solely for one quote about the von Einem case. It comes complete with a DVD which touches so briefly on the disappearance that it is not worth watching. If you seek information about the social or historical context of the children's disappearance, however -- which is one thing that I have not attempted to do on this site -- it may be useful.

Three other books published in recent years give mention of the Beaumont case. They are "Shallow Graves" by Peter Hoysted and Paul B Kidd (Five Mile Press, 2002); "Great Australian Mysteries" by John Pinkney (Five Mile Press, 2003); and "Twelve Crimes That Shocked The Nation" by Alan J. Whitticker (New Holland Publishers, 2005). None of these books is quoted as a reference, above, because none of them has been used as a source of information for this site. I have not read "Shallow Graves" so I cannot comment on it, but the other two use this site as a reference. Whitticker's book is better than Pinkney's.