The Arsonist

A stunning achievement.

Brisbane News

In Hooper’s sure hands the grimmest details become exquisite imagery. Strange to report, there can even be beauty in arson’s aftermath.

Robert Drewe, The Age

An extraordinary well-written and stirring account. The first half of the book is a masterclass in writing engaging true crime.

Herald Sun

Like the best historians, Hooper recognises her complex responsibilities to past and present, to her historical subjects and contemporary readers. The Arsonist is a brilliant and moving book about ecological devastation and social desolation.

Marilyn Lake, Australian Book Review

Hooper’s sense of journalistic duty is as present here as it was in her acclaimed 2008 book The Tall Man.

Weekend Australian

If not handled carefully, reconstruction narratives can turn stories into unsolvable puzzles. This is because they derive their narrative coherence from atomised sources that often conflict with each other. While Hooper does allow her multiple characters many digressions, The Arsonist achieves its clarity through strict linear chronology. The characters offer myriad interpretations of Sokaluk’s motivations which Hooper does not adjudicate; there remains space for the reader to decide what they believe to be true about the fires and about the arsonist.

Sydney Review of Books

If Hooper has uncovered a truth, it is how years of casual cruelty can make an individual so ambivalent to their neighbours. Excluding the 'different' might be a failing for which society pays dearly.

Daily Telegraph

Homing in on one man, one investigation, one court case and one small regional community, Hooper tells a much bigger story of fire in Australia, deftly bringing in its sociological, cultural and environmental dimensions.

Hobart Mercury

Unsettling…a gripping and insightful book.

The Economist

We will all learn something from the devastating events that scorched a community and the way in which [Hooper's] storytelling draws a reaction.

The Times