It is hard to believe in the New Zealand we currently live in that 63 years ago the death penalty still happened. It had already been abolished, and with a change to a more conservative government, amidst fears of an increasingly undesirable youth element, it was reintroduced. This I learnt from reading this novel based on the real life second to last legally endorsed execution in this country in 1955. The massive public out cry from both the trial and the hanging led to its abolishment in 1961. There had been a hanging not long before this one that also resulted in protest and public petitions.

There is no doubt that 21 year old Irish born Albert Black did kill a fellow young man, Johnny McBride. But the circumstances of the killing, the prejudices of the legal system of the day and most of the jury towards young Irish emigres, or just young men with no proper jobs or fixed abodes in general should have resulted in a case of manslaughter at the very least, and probably a mistrial. But no, neither of these things happened.

Dame Fiona takes us back to Ireland where Albert was from, his 10 pound pomme journey to NZ, his not terribly successful attempts at getting work, the people he met, friendships he formed. He was very well liked, came from a loving family, and had a good head on his shoulders. But he was alone and lonely, very homesick for Ireland and his family, a young man of little direction or the means to get himself a good start in a new land. He comes to Auckland, drifts into a group of people similar to himself, and things go very badly wrong resulting in a killing.

She tells a great story, using the facts and her extensive research to show us what Wellington and Auckland were like in the early 1950s, what people were wearing, eating, the night life, where they lived. It was also a time of moral panic, people were genuinely frightened of how out of control a certain element in our society was becoming. I think nowadays we would equate them to boy racer culture perhaps? Hence the crack down on law and order and anything involving immoral behaviour, excess drinking, partying etc etc.

You have to feel sorry for Albert. By all accounts he was a very nice young man who happened to get caught up in the wrong crowd. How many times do we hear that story. This is a beautifully told and sensitive handling of a what at the time was a very difficult issue. Dame Fiona has yet again written an outstanding book, telling the stories of the people of this country. I wanted to cry when I finished it, not just for the subject but also for the writing and story telling.

Most books (fiction at least) build suspense by teasing you with an unknown ending. This book didn't really have that option since it's based on real events. instead, Kidman teases us with the smaller details Albert Black's life - which woman he was in love with, how his relationship with Jonny formed and soured, whether or not his mother would be able to see him one last time. For a book about a boy who would be dead by the end of the story, it was surprisingly full of hope. The optimism of the court appeals and his mother's actions were presented without the shadow of what was coming and small moments were made real by the poetry with which Kidman describes the world around each character. It didn't fixate on the morbid details of the murder and the execution, it elaborated on these as much as was necessary to show the complexity of the case for manslaughter rather than murder. It was well-researched and yet had enough elaboration to make the characters surprisingly tangible - I loved her descriptions of Albert's parents being "a singing couple" for example, we all know one of them but I've never heard it described like that.

The only thing which made this 4 stars and not 5 stars for me was the fact that for some reason I wasn't hooked (maybe because I knew the ending?) It was an easy book for me to put down but also one I was happy to come back to. Maybe it's a good choice for people who often procrastinate. Would recommend, especially to nz history buffs.

Every year the Ngaio Marsh Awards for New Zealand Crime Fiction include something that makes this reader marvel at the depth and quality of work coming out of that country. Dame Fiona Kidman came to THIS MORTAL BOY as (paraphrasing her own words) an accidental crime writer, but she has form in the central concept, where she has often recreated the past of characters, developing a fictional story based on true events or people. THIS MORTAL BOY is just such an undertaking.

Albert Black was the second last person executed in New Zealand, and I believe I saw somewhere that Kidman came across his story after talking to a witness to the events that lead to his conviction (this occurred in the mid 1950's). Black was Irish, born to a desperately poor family, an immigrant to New Zealand in search of prospects and a better life. Kidman takes readers back to Black's childhood in Ireland, and most tellingly gives us a glimpse into his families anguish at the conviction and the prospect of his execution. The novel concentrates on the story of Albert Black however, so we don't get the same sort of insight into the victim Alan Keith Jacques (aka Johnny McBride). Working backwards and forwards through the past and Black's life in New Zealand, Kidman seamlessly, tellingly, compellingly, draws a picture of a young man on the cusp of life who made the sorts of choices, and therefore mistakes, that many make.

Kidman has pulled off one of those forms of novel where a true story is woven into a fictional account that doesn't play fast and loose with the truth or the ultimate outcome. A fight over a girl, leading to Black's decision to arm himself with a knife, after which an encounter with the same man who beat him the night before, turned into a single knife blow that killed his rival in love and Albert Black was ultimately executed. The build up to this event provides real insight into a febrile society. Post war, social change had arrived in New Zealand, and young people, in particular are very different. The free love, drugs and rock and roll 1960's are on the horizon, whilst 1950's bodgies and widgies subculture was thriving. The tensions around the "generation gap" were starting to be felt and there was an overwhelming belief that the younger generation were out of control. Needless to say it's a heady mix for a young Irishman from a deprived background to land into. The opportunities that present themselves on his arrival in Auckland are almost too much for him to handle, and the smack in the head that is falling in love, sends him spiralling into some really bad decision making.

Somewhere in all of this, the line between fiction and fact becomes blurred in a manner that readers unaware of all the facts of Albert Black's crimes will be hard-pressed to pick. Kidman uses a series of letters from prison, accounts of final visits with friends and switching timelines and places to draw out a story of an immensely vulnerable young man in a time that's not best suited to understanding and forgiveness. In particularly heart-breaking fashion we also see the affects of his crime, trial and punishment on his mother. Back in Ireland, desperate to get to her son, to understand what has gone so horribly wrong, the portrayal of this woman is moving. You're left considering the ease with which young men do stupid things, a sneaking suspicion that murder was too harsh a decision, and the anguish of that mother and her belief in her son; in stark contrast to comments attributed to NZ Attorney General, John Marshall, "... we could do without these deplorable migrants". Readers have no option but to pause and consider if this is really what he said, what were the implications of that attitude on the trial and sentence?

THIS MORTAL BOY is sensitively written, beautifully constructed, considered and well balanced. It carefully delivers a number of points for the reader to contemplate - lack of compassion, lack of understanding of peer pressure, overt political interference in the judicial system, and the finality of capital punishment. It's not, however, a novel that shouts moral conclusions from the rafters. Rather it lays out the story of two young men who make stupid decisions, who lack self-control and wisdom and end up in an awful place. Whether or not they both deserved to die for this is left to the reader to consider, as is the role of the state and the judiciary when it comes to careful and cautious consideration of the facts, and the right to compassion and clear moral leadership. Needless to say, THIS MORTAL BOY, is a mighty undertaking and a very worthy Ngaio Marsh Award Winner.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/mortal-boy-dame-fiona-kidman

A very moving book.

Amazing. This book was amazing. That is all.

I nearly stopped reading this about one-third of the way through - it's just so sad, and you know exactly how it's going to end. But I had to read the ending, and then I went back and read the rest of it, and it's a brilliant book - there's nothing else to be said for it.

Read the blurb. Read somebody else's review.

Not an easy book to write, I think. Particularly one where the main characters fully inhabit the world of New Zealand in 1950s, or at least the one portrayed to us in books or the screen, albeit a bit wilder than in the film Tangiwai. It certainly hit a lot of touchstones early:

After the swearing in, a recess is called where they will get to know each other over morning tea and biscuits.

I felt tightly wound up reading This Mortal Boy. It’s tense when a marble is stolen, it’s tense over immigration:

'The country’s full of foreigners these days. Wogs everywhere. Spicks. Jews. Chinamen. All sorts, if you ask me. We were better off before the war.'

…it’s tense over flatmates, its tense with the debates at the highest and lowest levels over the death penalty, it’s tense at home, with no chance to unwind:

Stopping at the doorways of each of his sons’ rooms, he half wishes one of them will wake, so that he might suggest a cup of hot Milo, a piece of toast smothered in Marmite.

…it’s very tense over sex, well, sometimes humorous:

As if she hadn’t heard this, Sally circled the forefinger and thumb of her left hand, using the forefinger of her right to poke back and forwards through.

There’s violence, ranging from domestic against women and children:

He got hidings if he didn’t milk the cows fast enough.

…to actual homicide and the Government’s ultimate response:

'Aren’t we, as a government, not succumbing to lynch law?'

...and drinking, so much drinking, be it the five o’clock swill, a wild house party or late night reminisces while the wife waits with cabbage pooled into an amoebic slime in the oven.

Welcome to New Zealand.

3.5