Paddy Richardson
Lucky Thing by Tom Baragwanath (Text Publishing, 2025), 304pp, $38
‘A young woman, a girl, thrown down into the trees like an old log, given over to the birds and the mossy dark.’ Jessica Mowbray, beaten and left for dead in isolated bushland, is discovered by Finnish honeymooners out for a tramp and transported to hospital just in time to save her life. Over the next days, as Jess lies unconscious in hospital, the small town of Masterton speculates on the facts of her assault; the police seem to be making little progress. Tension in the town intensifies, tautening to almost breaking point, when teenage boy Stu Kelson goes missing. This time there’s no fortunate rescue. He’s discovered bashed, tied up and dead in the exact area where Jess had been found. He’d been the last person known to be with Jess before she disappeared from a party. This must be a revenge killing.
Baragwanath introduced Lucky Thing’s main character, Lorraine Henry, in his previous novel, winner of the 2022 Michael Gifkins Prize, Paper Cage. Crime fiction frequently uses a member of the police or a private detective as the principal character, but Lorraine, while central to the police investigations she is involved in, is a different type of investigator. ‘Lo’ is in her sixties, has physical limitations—a recent hip replacement—and works as the files clerk in the local police station. She’s ‘not a cop, she’s a records clerk. She sits out back among the piles of paper, making connections, remembering things. Working things out that the actual cops don’t want to hear about.’ With her unique position as a Pākehā married into a Māori family—and, in contrast to the two police officers, Rick Ambrose, the ‘boss’ and a bully, and Dion, the ineffectual constable—she knows her community, the families, the secrets, the rivalries, what lies beneath the surface. If her intense involvement in the investigation, and the fact that Rick loses his temper and physically assaults her without any redress, test credibility at times, she is nevertheless an engaging character who carries the action along with humour, sensitivity and insight into her town.
The use of the present tense effectively brings a sense of immediacy to the evolving events, and the first-person narration creates empathy. Lorraine’s voice—her thought patterns, a mix of humour, irony and deep concern—is entirely convincing: ‘mine has been quite the fluid job description lately. Fetching the biscuits for the staffroom, piecing together Dion’s spidery pages of notes into something the prosecutor’s office can read, covering the Chief’s updates to Head Office while he’s at Bunnings. Light child-recovery duties.’ Through Lorraine we find out about the community; about Jess, about her cousin Michaela, about their families. Her links with the girls, with their families, with the outrage of a girl left to die from her injuries and exposure make her fierce determination to discover what has happened entirely credible, developing the reader’s ongoing sympathy and interest: ‘the nights aren’t too cold yet, lucky thing. Otherwise we’d be having a different conversation.’
The question of luck is an ongoing motif. There is a decided sense of division between the haves and the have-nots of the town, the lucky and the not-so-lucky, with a strong implication that the town was initially created by, and now belongs to, the landowners, the Pākehā families who have connections with the original British settlers: ‘their place has been in the family since they broke the bush, pretty much.’
Children are relegated to their positions within the town, determined by the ‘luck’ of birth: those from the wealthy families are educated at the well-equipped elite schools, Langsford and Aquinas, while the remainder go to ‘High’. When landowner Lily Kelson is questioned about Jessica being at the woolshed party on her family’s estate, Tarehu Station, she makes it clear that she doesn’t know the girl; she only knows the girls who go to Aquinas, those who go to pony club and the socials and ‘the swimming’. Tamati, as one of the few Māori at Langsford, is targeted for disapproval and blame when things go awry. Pat Kelson is clearly disapproving of his friendship with his son, Stu, and Lorraine gives her own insight as she watches him at a Langsford sports event: ‘he’s apart, held at a distance from the watching parents and the boys on the pitch. Or maybe a distance he’s chosen’.
It’s also lucky to be born male within the town. Within the laws of masculinity, it’s both assumed and acceptable that men will ‘blow off some steam’: ‘The ghost of a smile travels between the three men. Boys and breaking glass. We’ve all been there, they seem to be saying. Even the chaplain, the dusty old stick is puffing his chest out’. It’s okay, too, for men to be promiscuous: ‘It’s in every lad’s blood to tomcat from time to time.’ However, complying with the town’s values and expectations creates pressure and suffering for those who are unable to conform. Stu and Tamati must hide their sexual relationship and, following Stu’s death, Tamati must hide his emotions. ‘Dad keeps asking me how I’m doing,’ he whispers. ‘Like Stu was just another mate.’
Challenging your seemingly predestined position in the town’s hierarchy is dangerous; when Jessica, who is smart and determined to do well, wins a place on the local debate team over girls from Aquinas, she is set up, invited to the Tarehu Station woolshed party, and drugs are slipped into her drinks. Inequality is sealed into the town’s very being. How you are treated is dependent on what part of the town you belong to: ‘she’s pretty, Michaela; she and her cousin both are. When the world gives them room to be.’
‘A place like Masterton, it’s easy to slot someone away, categorised and neat. Trouble, or no trouble at all.’ The atmosphere of a small New Zealand country town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, provides the ideal setting for the novel. Clearly recognisable, the town is both a place of comfort and discomfort; there’s the safety that comes with familiarity, but along with that comes the lack of privacy, the swiftly made and frequently unfair judgements, and possible meddling, even violent reaction. And, as is typical of small New Zealand towns, there’s a high level of interest and involvement in competitive sport—tennis, hockey and netball—with the community turning out to watch. The better players take on celebrity status as the town’s ‘stars’.
Lorraine’s attitude to her town is ambivalent. Married into a Māori family, she both belongs and doesn’t belong and must be deferential and respectful as she negotiates various factions and boundaries. While she clearly has enormous love for her community, she is also aware of its failings. Rumour and gossip are rife: ‘I find myself marvelling at the efficiency of the machine – this is pure person-to-person transmission.’
Tom Baragwanath, though careful not to make judgements, uses Lorraine’s voice to describe Masterton and its community, the place he grew up in, with unflinching honesty. There are ‘the Mowbrays and their kind. Our side of town. Workers, not owners.’ These are the families where mums are no longer present, and where dads are unknown or negligent, with the remaining family members taking on the kids left behind and doing their best. Lorraine, for example, raised her niece after her sister died, while sister and brother Bea and Tuck are bringing up Jessica and her cousin, Michaela. There is violence, tragedy and neglect. When Jessica is discovered injured, though she failed to come home overnight, she hasn’t been missed by her family; and when Bea, her mother, arrives at the hospital she carries with her ‘the acrid waft of old booze’. This is in stark contrast to what happens when Stu, who comes from a wealthy family, goes missing: an immediate search party is called.
Through Lorraine, we experience the bitterness and anger at past injustices and at a legacy of dishonesty within the town. Lorraine’s family was cheated by the wealthier landowners, the Kelsons and the Brookes, out of the farm they had previously owned. When Jessica goes to the woolshed party at the farm—‘there’s a logo stencilled on the driver’s door: Tarehu Station. The outline of a cattle beast around the words, its horns obscured under a film of gravel dust. My mouth fills with spit, but I keep moving.’ The underhanded procurement of land that she and her family have experienced is reminiscent of the way land was taken from Māori, and her family’s loss of home and subsequent straitened circumstances relate to those on ‘our side of town’ whose families also lost out because of deception and misuse of power.
In accordance with the demands of crime fiction, the pace is swift; there are secrets, puzzles and clues—the colour of Jessica’s hair, the ‘few loose strands of horsehair’ Lorraine notices on Lily Kelson—the solution of Jessica’s assault, Stu’s death, and who was responsible and why. At the heart of the novel is the clash between the worlds of the owners and those of the workers. Tension is deftly created through dramatic events. For example, Lorraine visits Bill Kelson, now in a nursing home with dementia, who gives away just enough background information to increase uncertainty and spark further investigation. Stu Kelson goes missing and dies, the bad feeling in the town intensifies, and there’s a strong sense of menace and danger: a truck is seen outside Bea’s place with a gun inside; there’s a fight in the car park outside the police station—witnessed by onlookers and journalists—in which the ‘chief’, Rick, is badly injured.
The writing in Lucky Thing is vivid and powerful: ‘it’s her, definitely. Mushroom pale, her eyes red and swollen, and all that lovely hair tucked behind her, tamed. I’ve never seen her this small.’ The language is often pared back for effect: ‘A man laid out against the concrete. A boy, pale and tied, with all life drained away. A girl discarded in those same lonely trees.’ There are some lovely cameos that provide a modulating contrast with the darkness of the narrative. For example, when Lorraine meets the Finnish honeymooners—the ones who discovered Jessica unconscious in the bush—Anders, who is on his third marriage, has difficulty with Lorraine’s Kiwi-brand humour: ‘“Ah, you are joking!” Milla smiles wide, showing me the teeth of a well-funded health-care system. “Anders, she is joking.” He nods, “This is humorous.”’
The ending of the novel brings a sense of loss, with Stu and his father, Pat, both dead, and the discovery of those responsible creating further upheaval for the community and their families. The two worlds of the lucky and the unlucky have collided, mysteries have been solved and comeuppances have followed. But though the truth of past deceptions has been revealed, given the many tragedies, the violence and the bitterness, it seems there is no lucky winner. The final pages of the novel, however, end with positivity and optimism. There is the solidity and love of Lorraine’s relationship with her grandnephew Bradley, and the hope represented by the birth of her grandniece.
PADDY RICHARDSON is a short-story writer and the author of nine novels who lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her work has featured in a variety of journals, anthologies and on radio, and has been highly commended in several writing competitions, including the Katherine Mansfield and Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards. She has held the University of Otago Burns Fellowship, as well as a number of other fellowships and residencies.
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