FRUIT OF A POISONED TREE, a true story of murder and the miscarriage of justice

462pp., illus., paperback, Updated Edition, Johannesburg, (2010) 2022

The trial of Fred van der Vyver, charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Inge Lotz in her Stellenbosch flat in 2005. Includes a new epilogue on events that followed the judge’s verdict

"Antony Altbeker has married an expert's knowledge of the criminal justice system with a storyteller's flair for narrative and suspense. The result is s book that provides rare insight into the often compromised nature of our courts, yet reads like a high-voltage thriller. If you though you knew something about the Inge Lotz murder trial, Altbeker has come, like a master decoder, to disabuse you of that notion." Kevin Bloom, author of Ways of Staying

"... a chilling revelation of the rotten state of the administrative capacity and of the professional bankruptcy of policing in South Africa. This is obligatory reading for those interested in the current state of the nation. It reads like a thriller and is utterly un-put-down-able. It leaves the reader with serious food for thought. It almost convinces one that fiction has become redundant in this country." Marlene van Niekerk, author of Triomf and Agaat

Antony Altbeker is the author of A Country at War with Itself and The Dirty Work of Democracy, which won the Recht Malan prize for non-fiction.