And Then the Darkness: The disappearance of Peter Falconio and the trials of Joanne Lees is published in Australia in January 2006 by ABC Books, rrp $29.95, and in the same month in the UK by John Blake Publishing
Two young English tourists watch a glorious Australian Outback sunset, and are waylaid in the middle of nowhere by a predatory stranger. There’s a single gunshot, and then the darkness …
Hours later, Joanne Lees is found wandering the highway, cut and bleeding, her hands bound together and tape matted in her hair. Her boyfriend Peter Falconio seems to have vanished into thin air, leaving behind only a pool of blood on the side of the road.
Joanne's account of her ordeal — the apparent murder of her lover, her capture at gunpoint, and her miraculous escape from the back of her attacker’s 4WD into the bush — sparked a frenzy of media interest and triggered the biggest manhunt ever mounted in Australia. But with few clues to the lone gunman’s identity, and as criticism of the police operation intensified, doubts about Joanne's story began to surface.
In this gripping account of Peter Falconio’s disappearance, award-winning writer Sue Williams delves into the saga as it unfolds, charting the young couple’s early lives, an ill-fated love affair, and the past of the gun-toting drug-runner accused of murder, abduction and assault. Along the way, she encounters a top cop prepared to risk everything to crack the case, someone hell-bent on proving Joanne a liar, endless conspiracy theories, countless devastated lives in both Britain and Australia ... and, finally, the shocking truth.
And Then The Darkness is published in Australia and Britain, and will be available from all good bookshops in early January. It is also to be the subject of an international telemovie.
SUE WILLIAMS is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author of eight previous books. For And Then The Darkness, she travelled all over the UK and Australia in her research, speaking to Joanne Lees’s family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues; the family, friends and neighbours of Peter Falconio; Bradley Murdoch’s parents, friends and enemies; and exclusive police contacts who gave her a penetrating insight into the biggest investigation ever undertaken in Australia.