Frank & Fearless

“When I walked through the office door each day, I knew that almost every decision I made would make someone unhappy…” In Frank and Fearless Nicholas Cowdery QC takes us behind the scenes of the toughest cases that defined his 16 years as the Director of Public Prosecutions for New South Wales. The headline-grabbing criminal trials of Gordon Wood, Keli Lane, and Christopher Gilham (tried for the 1992 murder of his brother and parents) are examined with forensic precision, along with the DPP’s contentious decisions not to prosecute artist Bill Henson and members of The Chaser. During his tenure, Cowdery was also well-known for his support for realistic drug and death with dignity laws, and for the need to decriminalise abortion. Frank and Fearless is a gripping and forthright account of the most difficult decisions Nicholas Cowdery had to make during his time as a gatekeeper of the criminal justice system.

Rachael Jane Chin practised as a lawyer before becoming a non-fiction writer. She has worked as a journalist at the Australian Financial Review and is the author of Nice Girl: The story of Keli Lane and her missing baby Tegan. Nicholas Cowdery AM QC was the Director of Public Prosecutions for New South Wales from 1994 to 2011. Previously he had been a barrister since 1971, working in Papua New Guinea and at the Sydney Bar. Recently, he has focused on helping developing countries improve the rule of law and efforts to improve the Australian criminal justice system. Nick is a University of New South Wales visiting professorial fellow.