Sophie Gee

But they're also, you know, using the novel as a form to do a kind of white satire on...

the attitudes and the kind of habits of kind of upper crust white settlers in these colonial places.

What we have not yet said, Jonti, is we haven't given Naio a specific location.

She grows up in Christchurch in New Zealand, which is in the South Island.

Very beautiful town.

It was where the earthquake, the big New Zealand earthquake was a while ago now.

And there's a wonderful description towards the end of the book, again, as Alan, the detective, walks out into the street and he sees the kind of landscape of the New Zealand town or city with the mountains in the background.

And I thought it was so evocative.

Maybe I can actually just give it to us right now by way of sort of explaining these sort of,

the landscapes of New Zealand and the way that one's aware of this incredibly dramatic scenery and surroundings, even when you're in the middle of a city.

So Alan comes out of his hotel.

Between the end of the street and the sky was the head of a faraway mountain.

Its flowing margin was sharp against the dawn.

Its base was drenched in a colder and more immaculate blue than Alan had ever before seen.

And as Packer had told him, this mountain was crested white and

and the little cold wind that touched Alan's face came from those remote slopes.

Alan paused outside his hotel, still looking up the street to the mountain and wondering at the line traced by its margin against the sky.

He thought, it's like the outline of a lovely body.

All beautiful edges are convex.

Though the general sweep may be inward to attain beauty, the line must be formed of outward curves.