Mock Funeral

I launch my fact-based novel 'The Mock Funeral' about the Irish Riots on the Goldfields of New Zealand in 1868, at the National Irish Feis or festival at Kapiti College canteen this Labour Weekend Saturday at 4pm. Come along if you are in the area and enjoy Irish dancing and singing and then the only drinks available (yes, we have permission to serve alcohol at the launch at the college). The novel follows the incendiary several months from the mock funeral, when around 1000 Irish iners amrched behind a priest and three coffins to commemorate the hanging of three Fenian patriots in Manchester the previous year, through the sectarian clashes on the goldfields and the sending in of troops by the new Governor Bowen, following death threats to himself and other officials, to the trial by the top New Zealand judge of the priest and editor of an Irish patriotic newspaper. In the midst of this turmoil two Anglo Irish agents are seeking to identify those planing the assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son, due in Hokitika. The story is told from the perspective of a young journalist keen to make his name by immersing himself in the Irish goldfields community.