Evil Angels (Cry in the Dark Movie Title) [Mass Market Paperback]

John Bryson (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam (May 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553272071
• ISBN-13: 978-0553272079
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,220,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic, March 20, 2000

By 

saliero (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evil Angels: The Case of Lindy Chamberlain (Hardcover)

This is a classic in not only telling the story of the Chamberlains, particularly Lindy, the mother whose baby was taken by a dingo 20 years ago, but also about how people can be caught up in a maelstrom of media scrutiny.

I remember the events so well, and, like the rest of Australia, watched them unfold year by year.

The Northern territory government and the media have a lot to answer for. The NT remains a backwater of injustice to this day - most often directed towards Aborigines, but also, as demonstrated here, with invective directed towards another group outside the conventional mainstream.

The media reported in the most outrageously biased and one-sided fashion, and actually whipped up the populous into a frenzy of finger-pointing, gossiping hatred toward Mrs Chamberlain.

I am not at all religious, but to my mind Seventh Day Adventism doesn't even sit far outside the mainstream Christian tradition, yet we were encouraged to believe it was some sort of devil-worshipping Jim Jones type sect.

Eventually the government was forced to recognise the veracity of the Chamberlain's story. ironically, another person died on The Rock for the essential clue to be discovered - a tourist fell off and his body was found near the baby's matinee jacket. It is almost beyond belief the lengths the authorities went to to balme the parents, when most of the people closest to the event on that night verified or supported the Chamberlain's case. Yet those voices were drowned out for years.

Bryson did a wonderful job of bringing this story to public atttention,and some of the most important parts were effectively translated to the screen in the Meryl Streep movie (Cry In The Dark).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbiased analysis of the Lindy Chamberlain case, April 6, 2009

By 

Chattan Gordon - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Evil angels (The Notable Trials Library) (Hardcover)

This book is the Notable Trials Library special edition of Evil Angels by John Bryson. The book provides an unbiased, painstaking account of the Lindy Chamberlain murder trial and appeal - the famous Dingo Baby case. Author John Bryson is a retired attorney as well as an author of fiction, non-fiction and biography. His expertise in both the literary and legal arenas shows in this work. Although Evil Angels reads like a true crime novel and is often mistaken for a novel, it is actually a non-fiction work. Bryson spent four years studying the media reports, inquest records, trial transcripts and appellate record of the Lindy Chamberlain case and interviewed witnesses and investigators. The result is a chronicle of one of the most famous and controversial murder trials of the 20th Century.

On August 17, 1980, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain and their three children were camping at Ayers Rock in Australia. The youngest child, Azaria, was 10 weeks old. While the rest of the family socialized with other campers around the fireside, Lindy Chamberlain put the baby to bed in her bassinet in the family's tent and returned to the fireside. Sometime later, several campers heard a baby's cry. Lindy Chamberlain seemed unconcerned. One of the older Chamberlain children and Michael Chamberlain insisted that the cry came from Azaria and urged Lindy to check on her. A few moments later, Lindy came out of the tent screaming, "the dingo's got my baby." Although other campers reported that a particularly brazen wild dog had been hanging around the campgrounds, no one other than Lindy actually saw the dingo take the baby, and no one actually saw a dingo when Lindy pointed and said "will someone, please, stop that dog." In the tent was a blood-spattered bassinet. No trace of the baby's body was found, in spite of an extensive search. Some of the baby's clothing was found in the desert beyond the campground, but the clothing had no trace of dingo saliva on it, nor was it torn apart.

At the inquest, the coroner concluded that a wild dog had killed the baby. The baby's clothing was then sent to London for analysis by a forensic expert, who concluded that a dingo could not have killed the baby and left the clothing intact. The expert also concluded that the clothing had been handled by human hands while the baby was bleeding. Murder charges were brought against Lindy Chamberlain (the prosecutors contended that she sliced the baby's throat while sitting in the family station wagon), and accessory-after-the-fact charges were brought against Michael Chamberlain (for supposedly planting the baby's clothing in the wilderness).

Bryson's account is remarkable for its lack of bias or slant. Bryson makes no attempt to paint Lindy as either innocent or guilty. She comes across in the book as a strangely icy person, showing little emotion beyond pride and resentment. Bryson reports the evidence and lets the reader draw his own conclusions as to what happened. Bryson does, however, paint a less-than-glowing picture of the Australian media and the general public who bought into the media's rumors, and does a masterful job at suggesting that Lindy's conviction was based upon an adverse public perception created by the media.

The case fascinated the Australian public, reaching almost public hysteria proportions. Bryson expertly sets out and analyzes the controversial aspects of the case - the prosecution was unable to identify a motive for such an unnatural crime and there were no witnesses who could identify Lindy as the killer. The evidence was almost entirely circumstantial and forensic. The public opinion element of the case is quite macabre and sinister, involving suspicions about the Seventh Day Adventist religious practices of the Chamberlains and erroneous conclusions about the baby's name. The book's title is an allusion to an Adventist leader who founded a colony in Australia, stating that the her mission was to spread Adventism despite the "sneering triumph of evil angels."

The Notable Trials Library edition of the book which was published in 1992 (seven years after the book was first published) contains an afterword which details the discovery, years after the trial, of new evidence in a dingo's lair. The Notable Trials Library edition also features an insightful introduction by Alan Dershowitz.

As with all of the Notable Trials Library books, the book is quarter-bound in leather and fine quality buckram, has gold-stamped lettering and decoration, gilt-edged paper and marbled endpapers. This is a keepsake volume.

Several years ago, I had good fortune to discuss the Lindy Chamberlain case, the public obsession with the trial and Bryson's book with top Amazon reviewer Stephen M. Haines who, as always, was very knowledgeable about Australian history, culture and events. The Amazon community lost a reviewer of unusual insight, lucidity and wit when Mr. Haines passed away last month. I dedicate this review to his memory.