Robert Wainwright

AUSTRALIA'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR When most Australians think of Nellie Melba they picture a squarish middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades. But there was much more to her life than adulation and riches. To succeed she had to overcome social expectations, misogyny and tall-poppy syndrome. She endured the violence of a bad marriage, was denied by scandal a true love with the would-be King of France, and suffered the loss of her only child for more than a decade, stolen by his angry and vengeful father. Against all odds, Nellie Melba became the greatest opera singer of her time on stages across Australia, America and Europe.

On a bleak, moonless winter night in 1995 beautiful Sydney model Caroline Byrne died, her body embedded head-first into a crevice at the bottom of The Gap at the entrance to Sydney Harbor. How did she get out so far, almost 12 meters from the base of the sheer sandstone precipice? Did she jump, as so many had done before at the notorious suicide spot, or had she been thrown in a fit of rage? What began as a sad Sydney ritual of retrieving the shattered bodies of shattered lives turned into one of the nation's most extraordinary murder investigations, leading to the dark heart of a city gripped by greed, pandering to its powerful, and exposing a police force whose lack of imagination and resources was surpassed only by the doggedness of its finest officers to right an unforgivable wrong. This is a journey to justice, the astonishing inside story of Caroline's father Tony Byrne's determination to find the truth of his daughter's death and, in doing so, test the justice system to its limits.