It’s all in the execution
Fiona Kidman brings a 1955 murder and the resulting death sentence to life.
Ayoung man croons to himself. His neighbours complain, but he gets louder as the morning train rattles past. He’s daydreaming of home, half a world away. Belfast. He’d grown up thinking himself British, to everyone here he’s Irish. He’s met at the door with a tie to wear in court. They can’t let him have it in his cell; it wouldn’t do to pre-empt what may still come.
In her latest novel, Dame Fiona Kidman takes us deep inside a case that caused plenty of controversy at the time, more than 60 years ago, and has left lingering questions to this day. Why did young Albert “Paddy” Black thrust a knife into the neck of Alan Jacques beside a jukebox
in a Queen St cafe? Was it a callous murder by a young delinquent, the latest violent symbol of an epidemic reportedly infecting New Zealand, or something else?
Kidman richly and eloquently brings the world of mid-1950s New Zealand to life. A time of deeply conservative politics and James Dean rebelling without a cause. World War II isn’t far in the rearview; scars and memories are no longer raw, but still vivid. Thousands of “Ten Pound Poms’’ arrive by steamship looking for a better life. Young and old, immigrant and local, Māori and European – there are plenty of divides for “they’re not like us” thinking.
The characterisation is equally textured. Kidman doesn’t just take readers into the courtroom or the viewpoints of main players – killer and victim, lawyers and judge – but goes broader and deeper. We get a holistic view of a life summarised by history as a single violent act. Or two.
Kidman takes readers to Black’s Belfast childhood, his early months working as a teenager in the Hutt Valley, his yearnings for home and enjoying bodgie life. We get a peek into the jury room, ministerial in-fighting, the effect on everyone at a prison when the noose looms – all sorts of lives, perspectives and contradictions that orbit lines in a history book.
Everything flows throughout shifts in time, place and perspective.
This is a tale about violent acts that is infused with humanity and compassion. And although it may be set more than half a century ago, there’s a lot here that seems relevant to our modern times.
This is a tale about violent acts that is infused with humanity and compassion.