Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell, stayed overnight in the town, and spent countless hours in fervent conversation about their impressions inside the courtroom – an odyssey that resulted in The Mushroom Tapes.

In league with the co-host of ABC’s Conversations, Richard Fidler, the three renowned writers explore the gap between the certainties of law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains unknowable about Erin Patterson.