H aving been at the forefront of high-profile legal prosecutions such as the murders of heart surgeon Victor Chang and the backpackers in the Ivan Milat case, NSW senior crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC is well qualified to write about true crime. 
Decades of experience have enabled him to get inside the minds of criminals, understand their motivations and thought processes. To, as he puts it, "better present a case more thoroughly and convincingly to a jury". This empathetic ability has also proved invaluable to him as a writer.
"My interest in the law originated very young, when I was five," says Tedeschi, also an acclaimed photographer. "It came because my father was an Italian interpreter in court and he used to come home with stories about his work that excited my interest. But I find writing almost compulsive; it's very meditative for me, I get into almost a trance state where I lose myself. If a few days go by and I haven't done any writing, I feel like I'm suffering from withdrawal symptoms."
From his childhood, Tedeschi vividly recalls eight-year-old Graeme Thorne's disappearance and murder in 1960 as a landmark moment in Australian social history, when parents became wary of allowing their children out of sight and supervision. This only known case of a child kidnapped for ransom in Australia is the compelling subject of Tedeschi's second and latest book, Kidnapped.
"I was the same age as Graeme at the time, and very emotionally driven," Tedeschi says. "I was very aware of the case; I wanted to analyse it. Now, every single time I give a talk about Kidnapped, a number of people say how that case also changed their lives when they were children." 
Tedeschi provides a fascinating commentary on kidnapper Stephen Bradley's actions and motivations, and an intuitive exploration of how circumstances, opportunities and Bradley's character combined to produce this most heinous of crimes. "I spent a lot of my time while I was writing trying to analyse the character of Bradley and working out his personality," he says.
But with the heavy responsibility of obtaining justice for victims of crime, Tedeschi's thoughts are ultimately with those who have suffered at the hands of criminals such as Bradley and feels saddened by what he sees in the course of his work. He describes the grief he feels for the men, women and children who have met their deaths prematurely. "(It's) an overwhelming sense of loss to the individual person," he says. "But also to the close relatives, friends and society as a whole. Such a sense of loss. Such needless acts of criminality."  
Elaine Fry 
Kidnapped  
(Simon & Schuster, $33). 
Mark Tedeschi is speaking at Perth Writers Festival today and tomorrow, see perthfestival.com.au for sessions.