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The Butterfly Man
By Heather Rose,
UQP, 317pp, $24.95
BRITAIN'S High Court ruled the seventh Earl of Lucan, Richard John Bingham, officially dead in 1999. His body has never been found. Sightings of the elusive peer continue in Africa, Sicily, Ireland, France, The Netherlands and Australia, though the last reliable one was in November 1974, shortly before he fled his London home after allegedly murdering his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, and attempting to murder his wife.
The Butterfly Man opens with Lord Lucan living -- and in the process of dying -- in Tasmania, where he has been incognito for 30 years in the unlikely guise of Henry Kennedy, an expatriate Scottish builder with a convincing burr and an interest in wooden boats.
Heather Rose's imaginative entry into Lucan's life is the latest of several recent Australian novels to engage speculatively -- and to varying degrees of success --...