The godfather of contemporary NZ crime writing has brought back offbeat local hero Detective Sergeant Tito Ihaka.
By Craig Sisterson - NZ Listener
Paul Thomas, photo Marty Melville
The Listener spoke to him about the book in 2012.
Knight errant, ronin, wandering cowboy, hardboiled private eye – the maverick cop of modern-day crime fiction is the latest in a long lineage of loner archetypes: mysterious and conflicted heroes who for centuries have fascinated those who’ve sat themselves down to read a book, watch a performance or listen to a storyteller; to absorb tales of daring, adventure and justice brought to those in need.
“[It’s] the Shane figure that rides into town and gets embroiled in a situation that may not be any of his business, but he can see it’s a bad situation for people who maybe can’t stand up for themselves,” says Paul Thomas, the godfather of contemporary New Zealand crime writing. “It’s that loner, that person who stands outside of society and who is maybe untroubled by some of the scruples that respectable society abides by, but when you get into that sort of situation, that sort of self-reliant person – physically tough and able to handle themselves – is what you want.
It’s like Charles Upham: he wasn’t much good at school, and I doubt the teachers at Christ’s College thought he was going to cover himself in glory in adult life, but in war he had attributes that made him an extraordinary hero.” In the 1990s, Thomas exploded onto the local fiction scene with a series of fastpaced crime thrillers packed with mayhem, spiralling subplots, humour and his very own maverick cop. Detective Sergeant Tito Ihaka, a hulking investigator who, like his literary antecedents, stood slightly apart from society and was somewhat untroubled by expected scruples, first appeared in Old School Tie, Thomas’s groundbreaking 1994 debut that one critic described as “Elmore Leonard on acid”.
Full piece at NZ Listener
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