COMP CLOSED | Book Giveaway | One Heart One Spade

One Heart One Spade is a compelling crime story about family, love and loss in 1970s New Zealand.

Wellington, December 1977. Felicity Daniels is missing, and a murdered drug dealer has complicated things for Detective Lucas Cole. Around him the Criminal Investigation Branch starts to unravel. As the questions surface, Cole starts to wonder if one of their own is responsible.

New bonds form and old ones wilt under the pressure. Facts become fictions and fictions become facts, the most trusted becoming the most likely. With his own relationship on the rocks, Lucas is led down a path he might regret as he negotiates the personal and the professional to find both Felicity and his own soul.

The catalyst for this debut novel was contemplating the murder of his friend Miles MacFarlane in 1980. In broad daylight, Miles was stabbed on Perrett’s Corner in central Wellington when he was only twenty years old. The novel was edited by Stephen Stratford, one of the last book’s he edited just before he suddenly, and sadly passed away.

Author Note:

‘I was driving from Parihaka to Ohakune for work in a rental car. For no known reason the memory of a friend – Miles MacFarlane – who was murdered in Wellington in April 1980 rushed into my mind. I started to think about all of the things that we have today that he’d be mystified by. The list is very, very long. When I got back to Wellington, I recalled an incident that Miles had with his yellow Skoda when its brakes failed on Orangi Kaupapa in Northland, Wellington. I started writing about it, and, without intending it to, it became an expanding, manuscript – it was completely unplanned. Miles became a character in the story, but I took him off centre stage and kept him alive – he is not the victim. In a way it is like honouring his memory and acknowledging that justice was never closed in his murder.

The novel is about how much has changed and how much has not. The central character of the story is Detective Lucas Cole with the plot revolving around his relationships with his colleagues and his failing relationship at home. It is a story about his growing understanding of issues and ideas that most people never even had to grapple with then – racism, misogyny, sexuality, colonialism. The crimes that swirl around him become a part of his growing sense of the wider injustices that the times he lives in reflect.

Being set in the 1970s makes it a historical novel. The attitudes are different and jar. It is crazy to think of what has changed in such a short period of time. Crazier to think about what the next forty years will bring. But also I hope the reader will sense that some things – both good and bad – have stayed the same.’

About the author:

Alistair Luke is a Wellington-based architect married to an architect, Sharon Jansen. They have two daughters at university in Auckland.

Aside from the usual excursions, Alistair was born and has lived in Wellington all his life. On his father’s side, he is a fourth generation Wellingtonian with roots back to its colonisation in the 1850s. Alistair is passionate about Wellington’s history and having experienced it as a teenager in the 1970s is, through writing, enjoying the sharing of those memories.

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1. 1. You must be a GrownUps member and receive our newsletter to be eligible to win.
   2. Competition closes on the 12th July 2022, winners will be notified via email by 14th July 2022.
   3. As a competition winner, you must confirm you have received our email notifying you of the win within three days. If we have not heard from you in three days the prize will be redrawn, and your prize will be forfeit.
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