Imre Salusinszky gives a clear account of what happened then and later. In the absence of anyone claiming responsibility for the bombing, and because twelve national leaders were staying in the hotel for the first Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting, conspiracy theories blossomed. There were demands for state and federal inquiries, even a royal commission. The plot thickened considerably: Tim Anderson and two other young men, all members of the India-based radical religious and spiritual movement Ananda Marga, had been found guilty of the attempted murder of Australia’s most prominent neo-Nazi. Before too much longer, Paul Alister, Ross Dunn, and Anderson were named responsible for the Hilton bombing too.

Ten years later, after a confusing farrago of accusations, counter-accusations, trials, witnesses reliable and unreliable, plots and pardons, a man came to the police with an unexpected confession. Evan Pederick, another member of Ananda Marga, who had also been in his early twenties in 1978, claimed responsibility. He said the Hilton bomb had been aimed at the Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who had imprisoned the Marga’s spiritual leader Ánandamúrti. Pederick said he had been recruited by Anderson, who had got hold of the explosives and the remote-control device to detonate them, and who wanted someone to plant the bomb. Because it had failed to go off at the time, Pederick had assumed it was a dud and left, with some relief. Not until the following day did he learn that, when the garbage collectors emptied the bin in the small hours, the bomb had gone off, killing one policeman and two garbage collectors.

Pederick’s confession was clear and uncompromising, although, coming so long after the bombing, he said he was unable to recall some of the details. But what he said had happened didn’t really clarify matters: Anderson, who denied having anything to do with this, was still believed by some to be responsible. Even though Anderson was acquitted, Pederick was condemned – not for what he had done but because he was not believed. He was considered an attention-seeking fantasist.

The somewhat elusive character of Evan Pederick is the focus of Salusinszky’s book. Salusinszky, who describes it as an authorised biography, enables Pederick to tell his whole story in public for the first time. Over seven years author and subject spoke often, and Salusinszky consulted Pederick during his research and writing. He presents a clear, sympathetic, and comprehensive account of Pederick’s life, from his upbringing as the son of a Methodist minister in an emotionally stifled Perth family, through his somewhat aimless years at university, his meeting with members of the Ananda Marga in Tasmania, the nature and results of his recruitment by the movement, and his confession, imprisonment, and later redemption as an Anglican clergyman in Perth.

Salusinszky shows us an intelligent, aimless young man, easily led, a drifter who fell into the orbit of the Ananda Marga and became dominated by them. Salusinszky adds that to some extent he and Pederick have had parallel lives: both were academic overachievers who started university at the same time, were only sons with heavy parental expectations, and were swept up into the counterculture.

This is fine as far as it goes, but for the reader to understand exactly what in Pederick’s nature and previous life experience made him deliberately commit murder, we need to know more about the Ananda Marga and what it meant to him. Salusinszky is not a great deal of help here. He doesn’t really get into who the Marga were, what their disciples had in common, what they believed, or how successful they were – in short, why Pederick, and others, were so successfully seduced by this murderous group. Indeed, Salusinszky more or less dismisses the Marga as just another example of the counterculture.

There may of course be legal issues here, and Salusinszky’s perspective may also be limited because he has chosen to rely on what Pederick has told him. Often people find difficulty in explaining their motives, especially if they are ashamed of something they have done, as Pederick clearly is. It is probably true, too, that anybody is capable of anything given the right circumstances. However, because the tone of the book is rather impersonal, it is also difficult for the reader to sympathise with Pederick as fully as Salusinszky obviously intends – let alone feel the connection between author and subject that he invites.

By and large, this is an interesting, readable account of a disturbing episode in Australia’s recent history. For anyone with a vague memory of the Hilton bombing without remembering all the details of what followed, this is a useful guide to the story’s twists and turns, with some salutary information about the grinding wheels of officialdom in several guises. But as a portrait of an intelligent man who has made an extraordinary journey from being a member of a cult and a self-confessed murderer to becoming a respected member of the community, the book is less successful. It would have been more valuable had the author delved deeper into the reasons why somebody like Evan Pederick followed the path he did.