Bloodstain: the Vanishing of Peter Falconio by Richard Shears

Most people know the old saying “Truth is stranger than fiction.” The accuracy of that statement becomes abundantly clear when you compare your classic fictional murder mystery with the real life one in Bloodstain.
Along a barren stretch of the Stuart Highway in the outback of Australia, a woman hails a truck driven by two everyday truckies and hysterically demands that they help her find her boyfriend. This seemingly ordinary night in July 2001 throws the entire world deep into a “whodunit” the likes of which they’d never seen.
From the very beginning, Joanne Lees's story of what happened when the caravan that her and her boyfriend, Peter Falconio, were travelling in across Australia got held up at gunpoint seems like something out of a horror movie. Slowly, people begin to notice the cracks in her witness account. But just as slowly, Joanne changes her story, filling up the cracks only to create others that she simply has no explanation for.
Where’s Peter’s body? Why did her attacker’s description change so drastically from her original portrayal? How did she get from the front of the truck to the back? Why is there such a lack of physical evidence that proves there was someone else around during her so called hold up? All of these questions and absolutely no answers.
Maybe she’s suffering from shock and she just honestly can’t remember the exact details of that horrifying night. But then, maybe her missing boyfriend isn’t as shocking or unexpected as she claims.
As it stands now, the courts and the legal system have stood by Joanne’s side and put her accused attacker, Brad Murdoch, behind bars but maybe it’s not as easy as that. The twists and turns of truth in this saga are bound to cause most people to raise their eyebrows and question the credibility of the end result.
A real life detective novel that demands you to question every little ‘fact’, Bloodstain is a read for those of us who don’t always like to see a happy ending and enjoy a few loose ends.