Flagging My First Blog
Hallelujah! Somewhat late in the piece, I start blogging about
my books and books I read. Please allow me to introduce myself, I am not a man
of wealth and fame, I am a word-worker, identified by my sometime patron Tony
Simpson as another example of what he does so well, a New Zealand social
historian. To this I add that I sometimes write fiction, even faction, for
usually there is research in my stories.
My latest book is a good example. The Death Ray
Debacle is a novel about the
true story of Victor Penny employed by the government in 1935 to develop a
‘death ray’, working on Somes Island under 24-hour armed guard. This was deemed
necessary after he was attacked by ‘foreign agents’ at his Takapuna place of
work. At the time the entire world was trying to develop radar and lasers and
Victor was showing promise. I picked up his story when I wrote a history of
Matiu/Somes Island called Island of Secrets. My research was only
possible because of PapersPast and it was considerably boosted by an old
acquaintance Dr Robert Mann putting me in touch with Victor’s son Evan, who
sent me a long and invaluable email about Victor’s life and inventions. Further
useful research came out of the Somes chapters on alien POWs, notably the Nazis
who were particularly active in the Auckland German Club from about 1934. If
you go to my Books section of my website www.davidmcgill.co.nz, you will see the
publicity for the book about Victor featuring the man himself surrounded by the
Union Jack, the Swastika and the Soviet flag. It was happenstance that I
feature flags just when John Key has got us all pondering which one we want for
New Zealand. My book indicates plans to have the Swastika raised here, maybe
others too.
The Death Ray Debacle is narrated by a fledgling fictional detective who is as naive
as we all were about foreign intentions for us. Again I had valuable research
assistance from my mentor when I wrote No
Right to Strike,
a history of the Police Association and Guild, Police historian
Sherwood Young. He put me on to information about the way Special Branch was
surveilling the Auckland German Club a year before Scotland Yard, under direct
control of the Commissioner of Police. I also learned of the modus operandi of
detectives as we made our first tentative steps towards what became our
Security Intelligence Service.
The style of my book is in the spy mode I read a lot of, from
Graham Greene and John Le Carre through to Joseph Kanon and Charles Cumming,
but also as always with a distinctive Kiwi angle. Indeed, this may be New
Zealand’s first spy story.
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