The text comprises a range of news-paper articles about Hean, as well as literary re-enactments of her final days and interviews with various individuals. Hean is described as ‘an elegant woman in her early sixties’ who chose ‘moderation in all things’. Her participation in the Lake Pedder campaign was linked to an apolitical desire to protect this piece of nature.  The strongest feature of Whatever Happened to Brenda Hean? is Millwood’s richly evocative prose. I enjoyed the way he contrasted the beauty and hid-den horror that he regards as inherent in Tasmania’s geographical and social land-scape. At one point, Lake Pedder is described as ‘the most beautiful of places’. Yet, as Millwood notes, ‘There is a dark force in Tasmania’ that is ‘forever wrapping its cloak over unsightly truths’.

Less impressive is the way Millwood attempts to link his fascination with the Hean case to his own experience of child abuse. He acknowledges that he has suffered ‘violence’ and suggests that Hean was ‘murdered’. Millwood declares that if he is able to solve the mystery of his subject’s disappearance, ‘then I might free the weight pressing on me and … on the whole of this island’. Millwood’s frankness is laudable, but his apparent belief that he can bring about social and personal liberation by discovering how Hean met her fate is naïve. Readers are ultimately led to wonder whether Whatever Happened is really a public exploration of the author’s personal demons.