Perth, 1899: a respected public servant mistakes a bottle of cyanide for
his heart medicine, swallows it and dies. Months later on the other side
of the country, a prisoner of Pentridge gaol with the same name as the
deceased reads of the inquest with alarm. He writes to the coroner with
his suspicions: the supposedly upstanding government accountant was an
impostor - an ex-con - who had stolen his identity and deceived people
at the highest level. The claims sent the authorities into a spin; who
really was the deceased? Was it possible he was the bushranger known as
'Captain Starlight' who, thirty years earlier, had callously murdered a
policeman and been sentenced to hang? How had he pulled off the
subterfuge and what other secrets remained hidden? As the investigation
unfolds, the remarkable life and crimes of Captain Starlight, committed
across four states of Australia under countless aliases, are revealed.
Author Jane Smith's meticulous research reveals the stranger than
fiction story of a compulsive liar and serial imposter: a doctor, a
stockman and an accountant - and a bushranger, forger, con-man and
killer. It is a true story of murder and deceit that reveals new
information and presents, for the first time, a theory as to the real
identity of the bushranger known as 'Captain Starlight'.
