The long-awaited 5th edition of Indictable Offences in Victoria is about to be published, authored once again by Ian Freckelton.
Ian is, to put it mildly, prolific and prodigious with the amount of written work he produces, but the new edition of this book has been a bit longer than was originally anticipated. (It was originally intended to be published around 2005.)
The earlier editions of this work were written by Ian Heath (it’s sometimes referred to as Heath’s for this reason).
This is one of the mainstay resources for anyone working in the criminal jurisdiction: lawyers, police, or judicial officers. I think it’s an essential reference, and highly recommend it.
The beauty of it is that it lists offences alphabetically, and succinctly discusses each charge-element, highlighting the leading authorities and distilling the essence of those judgments. It also provides helpful cross-references, and suggests alternative offences. This last feature is especially helpful for investigators.
If the published edition contains as much as the draft I saw some time ago, it will be significantly larger than the previous editions, with commentary on many indictable offences outside of the traditional Crimes Act focus of those earlier editions.