Vulnerable, volatile, and seemingly misunderstood, he endured a tortuous childhood and lived his life with undiagnosed and untreated autism. One recalls a truncated phone conversation with his son, soon after which he received a text message that read, “Dad im dead I love u.” In addition, Hooper delivers an evenhanded psychological assessment of Sokaluk. Hooper fills in the other sections with the stories of stressed attorneys jockeying for litigious positioning and dramatic courtroom scenes but also the heartbreaking profiles of the fire victims.

Dividing the book into three sections, the author brings together the findings of crime scene experts, forensic fire scientists, and arson squad authorities, all of whom meticulously scrutinized every possible clue left by a fire in which “burning birds fell from trees, igniting the ground where they landed.” A local suspect named Brendan Sokaluk was detained as the “firebug” arsonist, but establishing a method or motive proved to be difficult. In an engrossing report brimming with urgent detail and palpable suspense, Hooper diligently retraces the steps of those investigations. In early 2009, two wildfires engulfed more than 450,000 hectares in the state of Victoria, ultimately leading to 173 deaths.

“A tactical breakdown of Australia’s catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires and the arsonist behind them. Written with Chloe Hooper’s trademark lyric detail and nuance, The Arsonist is a reminder that in the age of fire, all of us are gatekeepers.

The command of fire has defined and sustained us as a species, and now, as climate change normalizes devastating wildfires worldwide, we must contend with the forces of inequality, and desperate yearning for power, that can lead to such destruction. But this book is also the story of fire in the Anthropocene. The Arsonist takes readers on the hunt for this man, and inside the puzzle of his mind. They soon began to suspect the fires had been deliverately set by an arsonist. As communities reeling from unspeakable loss demanded answers, detectives scrambled to piece together what really happened. What came to beknown as the Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people and injured hundreds more, making them among the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in Australian history.

On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno.

The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper