Mystery with a local flavour

 

Its said ‘everyone has a novel in them’. After 47 years in television production in Canada and New Zealand, recent Mangawhai resident Peter Pedrotti sought to try his hand at writing a movie script. However after three years he found the tail was wagging the dog and so the script was disseminated and rebuilt as his first novel Black Sands & Toitoi. Thus Peter now belongs to a growing group of local self-published authors and will launch his book at the Mangawhai Museum on the Saturday of Labour weekend.

To escape winter blues, three Canadian ladies holiday in New Zealand. For a start, black sand and toitoi are two things which would immediately be foreign to Canadians and therein begins the saga of mystery and romance, crime and passion, innocence and deceit along with its share of black humour and pathos.

Offsetting the air-fare they stay at a cheap but quaint West Coast hotel and befriend local artists. Socialising at a pub they cross paths with a motorcycle gang. Unsuspecting they become involved in a drug network that has its beginnings on the edge of the Gobi Desert, and continues through Hong Kong to the islands of the South Pacific.

This is an international story that links Hong Kong triads with New Zealand gangs and China’s attempts to colonise the South Pacific with economic stealth. The Cook Islands, with its maritime zone of two million square kilometres, is a prime target. The tribes of Rarotonga play an integral part in the final solution as does a black and white collie dog named Lady.

This fast-paced story will have some familiarity to locals being set in the black sands of Karekare and Whatipu on Aucklands west coast, and also Muriwai and Puhoi prior to extending its tentacles much farther afield. 
This is a novel with a local flavour which is bound to create interest.

 WHAT: Book launch, Black Sands & Toitoi by Peter Pedrotti. WHERE: Mangawhai Museum. WHEN: Saturday October 27, 1-4 pm. Wine supplied by Millars Vineyard.

Author Peter Pedrotti launches his first novel.