This book tells of the assassination of Hal Franklin, a District Commissioner in PNG in 1971 - based on fact and constituting the only political assassination in Australian history. The story is narrated in the first person by David Apps, a bright young kiap, keen to make his mark on the country, and who, working for Franklin, comes under his charismatic spell.
Apps is slowly corrupted, emotionally and morally, by the power of ruling. On a murder patrol he takes some carvings which after their sale back in Sydney allow him to become a successful property developer. His report to Franklin on the patrol is a masterfully rendered cover-up.
The subtle erosion of Apps' moral principles, and his relationship with Franklin, is the thematic core of the book, and this human drama is a microcosm of a much larger national drama involving the betrayal of a whole country by its colonial master, Australia, as the pressure to return land to its indigenous owners is resisted by whites who have held that land for almost a century. Over all these events looms the shadow of PNG Independence.
This novel is critically acclaimed as one of the best written and most important colonial novels to come out of Australia.
