These days, it's almost a full-time job keeping up with all the bizarre murders and kidnappings in Adelaide. The so-called Family Murders of the 1980s is one of the most notorious of these myriad cases, and in reading the details of the case in "Young Blood", it's not difficult to see why.

Author Bob O'Brien is a former police detective who worked on the case and gives us the inside goss on von Einem and the case, which in some cases, I must warn, is extremely disturbing.

One concern I had about "Young Blood" is that O'Brien lets his socially conservative beliefs show, as it becomes clear that for him anything other than heterosexual is considered "perverted", and he seems to insinuate that, for example, a transvestite is all but guilty of accessory to murder because she was a transvestite.

Beyond that quibble, quite a good read. ( )