Description

The Burke and Hare ‘anatomy murders’ of 1828 terrify
Edinburgh, until Burke is hanged and Hare disappears.
Over a decade later, in the early days of New Zealand
colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern
shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown,
sets up a pub with a nasty reputation and finds himself a
woman who had been abandoned on his beach. Nearby,
children sing dark nursery rhymes of murder.
One afternoon Ōkiwi’ is visited by a pair of ex-soldiers, a
bo’sun looking for a fight, and itinerant worker William
Leckie with his young daughter Mary. When a body is
discovered on the beach, it could be that a drunken man
has drowned. But it could be that the gathered witnesses
know something more