Hedley Thomas Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Hedley Thomas is a published Australian author and investigative journalist. She has won eight Walkley Awards, two of them being Gold Walkleys.

He is married and resides in Brisbane and has two children. He was the victim in 2002 of not only a death threat but a drive-by shooting.

Once he had completed high school, Thomas started up a career as a newspaper copy boy in 1984 for the Gold Coast Bulletin. He worked as a copy boy for nine months before starting up a cadetship in journalism there. Before long, he moved to Brisbane in 1988 for The Courier-Mail.

After a year had been completed, he decided that it was time to go to London. This time it would be for two years, working as a foreign correspondent for News Limited Australia. He was just 22 years old at the time and would cover such historic events as the Romanian Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1991, he would go back to The Courier-Mail, this time working there for a year and a half. He first moved to this location to work as the News Editor for six months at the Hong Kong Standard. He would then move over in 1993 to the South China Morning Post. He would work in a variety of roles there, including Senior Writer, Deputy Features Editor, and Senior Reporter.

He would come back to Brisbane as well as The Courier-Mail in 1999. Hedley would win a Walkley Award in 2005 for the series of articles that he did on Jayant Patel, the Bundaberg Director of Surgery. This would later serve as the base for Sick to Death, a nonfiction book that was released in 2007. The book also won a Queensland Premiers Literary Award for its work doing the “Literary Work Advancing Public Debate”.

He moved in 2006 to The Australian’s Brisbane bureau. He also won a Gold Walkley in 2007 for his series that highlighted the police pursuit of Mohamed Haneef, who was an innocent doctor who had been wrongly accused of being a terrorist. He won the award and then left journalism behind in 2008 so that he could work in the resources sector, with a role in communications as well as investor and government relations.

Hedley would go back to journalism in 2010 with The Australian. During this time, he would cover different aspects of the AWU affair. He would also in 2018 win a Gold Walkley with producer Slade Gibson for the podcast series they did called The Teacher’s Pet. It was fourteen episodes and a full investigation into Lynette Dawson’s disappearance, a case of a missing Sydney mother in 1982 gone unsolved.

As of December, the podcast series had been downloaded an incredible twenty-eight million times. It was also the singular Australian podcast that had reached the top spot in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. It was a success but the depth of the show and its investigation were criticized, saying that it could complicate or compromise witness testimony as well as police investigations that were still ongoing.

Thomas would be awarded the Sir Keith Murdoch Award in 2022 after a guilty verdict was handed down in a murder trial of Chris Dawson, Dawson’s former husband. There were two series that followed up to this podcast, The Teacher’s Trial and The Teacher’s Accuser. They came out in 2022 to 2023.

The Teacher’s Pet did so well that Thomas hosted and has appeared in different podcasts. These include The Night Driver, Shandee’s Story, and Shandee’s Legacy. He was inducted into the Media Hall of Fame in the Melbourne Press Club in November of 2018.

Sick to Death: A Manipulative Surgeon and a Healthy System in Crisis– a Disaster Waiting to Happen is the nonfictional story of a terrible incident that shocked the nation when they learned about it.

You may have heard of it before. “Doctor Death”, as he was called, may have killed up to 87 people while he was caring for them. Dr. Jayant Patel soon became one of the most notorious people in the history of medicine, as well as murder.

This is the story of what really happened, told personally by the same journalist who broke this story. It goes into detail about the horrible actions of this doctor. His patients went through horrible infections, nicked arteries that caused internal bleeding, and healthy organs and their mutilation.

Patel was able to somehow get away with horrible things in an Australian hospital for two years without any consequences being handed down. At last, Toni Hoffman showed how horrible his behavior had become. This resulted in a Royal Commission Investigation not only of the doctor but of the entire system of health.

This is the story of some families, what they have been through, how their lives have been changed, and may make you think twice about the belief that you have in medical systems. Read this book to get the whole story!

The Teacher’s Pet is an engaging book from Hedley Thomas. It will take you behind the scenes with an account of one of the most interesting murder mysteries to ever happen. This includes the crime, the resulting podcast investigation, teen students and their sexual exploitation, courtroom drama, and the story of how justice was delivered.

Lynette Simms went missing in 1982 from the Northern Beaches in Sydney. Form there, no one ever heard from her again. Lyn always served as a nurse who cared for others, a mother who was nothing but loving, a wife devoted to her spouse.

Her husband was Chris Dawson. He was a teacher, a rugby league star, and he was close with Paul, his twin brother. This facade of domestic bliss all fell apart when Chris all of a sudden became obsessed with the babysitter in the family, who also happened to be his sixteen year old student.

This was a girl that he had moved into Lyn’s home– as well as her bed– two days after she had gone missing. It has now been thirty-six years, and this investigative journalist has gone back to the story in a podcast series that has gathered the unconditional support of Lyn’s colleagues, friends, neighbors, and family, as well as an audience all around the globe.

This book has wonderful new leads as well as evidence from the past that may have led to authorities wanting to take action. Chris got arrested sometime in 2018. After a trial, he was found guilty of the crime of murder in August of 2022. Read this book from Hedley Thomas to get the full story!