The Tall Man

The story of a death, a policeman, an island and a country.

The Tall Man is the story of Palm Island, the tropical paradise where one morning Cameron Doomadgee swore at a policeman and forty minutes later lay dead in a watch-house cell. It is the story of that policeman, the tall, enigmatic Christopher Hurley who chose to work in some of the toughest and wildest places in Australia, and of the struggle to bring him to trial. Above all, it is a story in luminous detail of two worlds clashing – and a haunting moral puzzle that no reader will forget.

Selected for ‘Best books of the year’ lists by Ali Smith, Colm T ibYn, Matt Condon, Peter Carey, Salon.com, The Globe & Mail and Dwight Garner in The New York Times.

‘The country’s finest work of literature so far this century. A haunting moral maze, described with such intimate observation and exquisite restraint that I kept pausing to take a breath and silently cheer the author … (I)n her tale of the fatal collision between two 36-year-old males, black Cameron Doomadgee and white Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, Hooper … has produced an Australian classic.’ Robert Drewe, The Age