This Mortal Boy

Download or read book This Mortal Boy written by Fiona Kidman and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An utterly compelling recreation of the events that led to one of the last executions in New Zealand. Albert Black, known as the 'jukebox killer', was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society's reaction to outsiders? Black's final words, as the hangman covered his head, were, 'I wish you all a merry Christmas, gentlemen, and a prosperous New Year.' This is his story. 'A beautiful writer' - The Times Winner of the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award and the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction.