When it came time to hang Ned Kelly, the job fell to shit-shoveller-turned-quack-doctor-turned-drunken-chicken-thief Elijah Upjohn. Such is life indeed.

Hanging Ned Kelly looks at the life and demise of Australia's most famous antihero from a new perspective: that of the vagabond who finally put the noose around his neck. Elijah Upjohn was the latest in a long line of flogging hangmen allowed to run amok because they'd do the dirty work that let officials keep their hands clean. Upjohn and his fellow boozing bunglers were so hated they were hunted by angry mobs, causing one writer to ask, 'Who shall hang the hangman?'

In Hanging Ned Kelly, Elijah Upjohn's tale becomes the rusty scalpel that slices open the underbelly of colonial Victoria. Written by Michael Adams, creator of the acclaimed podcast Forgotten Australia and author of The Murder Squad, this is an odyssey into an infernal underworld seething with serial killers, clueless cops, larrikin vigilantes and furious fallen women. Looming over them all: the depraved hangmen paid to execute convicted men and women in Melbourne before it was marvellous.