The curious case of a literary recipe for murder by mushroom

The Age

2 days ago

'Luckily, there are much faster ways to kill off your loved ones,' she continued, walking to her easel, where a selection of mushroom drawings was on display, 'and mushrooms are an excellent place to start.' - Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, 2022.
Life, it is said, sometimes imitates art. And vice versa.
And so it might have seemed to curious bibliophiles as the so-called mushroom trial stretched on in Morwell over recent months.
As evidence piled upon evidence, and the defendant, Erin Pattison, kept chanting 'incorrect' and 'inaccurate', a friend drew my attention to a novel entitled ' Lessons in Chemistry '.
It was a publishing phenomenon when it hit the bookshops in 2022, a year before the Gippsland murders. It was Dymocks' Book of the Year in Australia that year, and became the No.1 borrowed book (most in e-book form) from US libraries in 2023.
It became hot stuff in Australian libraries, too.
When detectives first began questioning Patterson about her mushroom-infused beef Wellington luncheon in July 2023 that killed three members of her estranged husband's family, it was reported that Lessons in Chemistry had a months-long waiting list of 61 at Leongatha Library. Since then, the book clearly became a favourite purchase – numerous dog-eared copies can now be found in op-shops all around the Latrobe Valley, according to keen-eyed book-lovers.
The book's fictional protagonist is Elizabeth Zott, who becomes a TV cooking show host in 1960s California after being sacked as a chemist.