Mad Mabel

A gripping psychological thriller about buried secrets, cold-case murder, and the notorious woman the world calls Mad Mabel.

There are two kinds of people no one ever suspects: little girls and old ladies.

Eighty-one-year-old Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick has lived on her quiet Melbourne street for sixty years. To her neighbours, she’s a cantankerous busybody with too much time on her hands. But Elsie has spent a lifetime hiding a dangerous truth—because when it comes to murder, little girls and old ladies are the last people anyone looks at. And throughout Elsie’s life, far too many people have met suspicious, sudden ends.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate and Darling Girls comes a dark, twist-filled story about justice, secrets, and identity.

In 1959, fifteen-year-old Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian ever convicted of murder. The press called her Mad Mabel—a monster, a menace, a mystery.
In 2025, an elderly man turns up dead on Elsie Fitzpatrick’s suburban lane. At first, no one suspects foul play… until detectives uncover Elsie’s hidden past.

Because in the 1950s, Elsie wasn’t Elsie at all.
She was Mabel.

Now, with the media storming her quiet life and police reopening the case that defined a nation, Mabel Waller—at eighty-one—has decided to finally speak. For the first time, the woman branded Mad Mabel will tell the world what really happened.

Is she a killer? A survivor? Or the only person who ever dared to deliver justice?

A tense, addictive, page-turning thriller about friendship, family, and the razor-thin line between justice and murder, Sally Hepworth delivers her most explosive novel yet.