As convicted triple murderer Erin Patterson begins what will likely be the rest of her life behind bars, true crime accounts of her handiwork are hitting bookshop shelves.

The killer cook was jailed for 33 years after feeding former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson beef Wellingtons laced with death cap mushrooms at her Leongatha home in 2023.

Subject to the appeal flagged by her lawyers last week, the stretch will mean Patterson – who turned 51 in jail in late September – will be well into her 80s by the time she tastes life on the outside again, if in fact she ever does.

Her sensational trial captivated not only Australia but the world as more than 50 witnesses delivered testimony over 10 marathon weeks.

The BBC ran a live blog that led its online site, while the Al Jazeera network and US masthead The Washington Post were others to cover it from afar.

With seemingly all said and done, bar the appeal, is there still more to know about what happened and why? Veteran screenwriter Greg Haddrick is among those who thinks there is.

He promises fresh insights into the police investigation of the murders and other details he contends were lost in the daily media coverage in his book The Mushroom Murders. It will be published by Allen & Unwin on Tuesday.

There’s also Recipe for Murder by former NSW detective and private investigator Duncan McNab, due out October 14, and The Mushroom Tapes, penned by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, coming on November 11.

Three of the upcoming books on the mushroom murders. Photos: TND

Haddrick insists it’s “a much bigger story than people realise”.

He said The Mushroom Murders took “about 100 cups of coffee” – that’s two or three months – to write. In the race to market, its release date has twice been brought forward.

Haddrick’s account of the Patterson trial is from the point of view of a fictional juror, who finds it hard to believe that without any motive, an intent to kill could be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Haddrick, a Logie-winning screenwriter and producer, is perhaps best known as co-writer of Underbelly, the television series that dramatised Melbourne’s gangland wars, and for the fictional shows Crownies and Janet King.

If aspects of the case seemed almost impossible to believe, it was because they were real life, he said.

“In crime fiction, you have to deal with credibility. But with truth you don’t have to be credible, you’ve just got to say it’s real,” he said.

According to the adage it’s “once a cop, always a cop”. Yet for McNab, his post-police private eye work has specialised in criminal defence, which surely gives him a rare perspective from both sides of the tracks.

McNab has also plied his skills as an investigative journalist and a media adviser to government, written a dozen other books and was a producer on Seven’s Murder Uncovered series and the Nine Network’s Australia Behind Bars.

Drawing on this extensive experience, the sleuth-turned-author presents “unmatched insight into the key evidence, the legal strategy and the emotional toll of a case that gripped the nation and captured global attention”, according to publisher Hachette.

Elsewhere, three true crime authors – in Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein – have collaborated for The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial.

The trio physically joined the media scrum during Patterson’s trial at Latrobe Valley Law Courts and spent hours discussing the themes of the case, which include revenge, marriage and mycology (the study of fungi).

They also discuss their own ambivalence about the true crime genre in an exploration of “the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality”.

Meanwhile, self-published accounts of the case are already available online, including a book by bare-knuckle boxing promoter Stu Armstrong.

Daniela Barkley, a former true crime Facebook group friend of Patterson’s and a trial witness, is promoting an upcoming novel Bloody Good Friends. She said it was based on fact and promised “whacky true crime groups”.

There are screen versions also, with upcoming ABC drama series Toxic from filmmaker Tony Ayres and Recipe for Murder optioned for television.

The Victorian Supreme Court dealt with more than 250 journalists and media outlets throughout the trial, including nine authors and seven documentary crews.

Haddrick believes the case remains a source of fascination due to Patterson’s contradictions and the unanswered question of motive.

A mother of two with no criminal background living a quiet life in rural Victoria was about as far away from the idea of mass murder as it was possible to be, he said.

“A lot of people feel a real need to understand why when it comes to murder, and she’s one of the most difficult cases to answer that question,” Haddrick said.

-AAP