Author David McGill with his latest novel. On the computer screen is a photo from his travels through Ireland. Photo / David Haxton
All good things must come to an end including a Paekākāriki author's mystery novel series.
It also brings the curtain down on a long and distinguished writing career.
David McGill's seventh, and final, novel featuring main character Dan Delaney, is out now.
The series has featured Delaney and family in various escapades around the world.
The final book, Back Home In Derry, is based in Ireland which is a fitting setting as McGill has Irish origins.
He said three things helped trigger the book, which took him 18 months to craft.
The first is that he used to work for a television times magazine which took him to the Fall's Rd, Belfast, in 1970, where tanks and barricades were at either end.
"It was quite an evil thing to put into a residential street.
"The troubles were just getting going."
The memories provided the inspiration for the opening sequence in his book.
Secondly, McGill's Irish diaries were "invaluable because I travelled around all of Ireland at that time".
And thirdly, viewing photos during his time in Ireland triggered memories and "really buoyed me".
McGill was pleased with the final book in the series.
"I've not been happy with all my books but I am with this one.
"I probably put a bit more into it in terms of thinking about it, rewriting it, and it is also quite personal as I'm also looking for my own ancestors which I haven't found.
"This is the most absorbing book I've done for a while, and also the most vexing, I suppose."
McGill, 79, who has about 60 non-fiction and fiction books to his name, doesn't think he'll write another book.
"It's just old age which has caught up with me.
"It's the closing of the professional side of my life as a publisher and a writer.
"And I'll tell you what – I wouldn't recommend it to my daughter – because it's too hard.
"It's too small a country but I'm amazed how much is still being published in this country.
"Nobody is making money though.
"Not even really successful authors like my cousin Jenny Pattrick, who wrote The Denniston Rose, which sold well over 100,000 copies.
"She told me she made $17,000.
"This is the biggest bestseller novel this country has ever known. It is being made into a film. It's about the coal mining era of the West Coast."
Despite the challenges, McGill has enjoyed his book writing career.
"I've always regarded it as continuing the journalism.
"You get into the habit of writing, in journalism, and you just keep ticking over really.
"I was talking to playwright Roger Hall, who I used to flat with, and we both agreed that we could have written more if the market would allow it but they don't."
To purchase a copy of Back Home In Derry and other titles go to www.davidmcgill.co.nz
Book teaser:
The shaky 1995 ceasefire between Republicans and Loyalists proves the best and worst of times for ex-policeman and ex-national security operative Dan Delaney and his family to track down Irish ancestors. Instead of finding his grandfather's origins in County Cork, he finds his own troubles with car theft and a clumsy horse but likes the Clonakilty black pudding and an IRA song about Derry. The trouble ramps up in Dublin, where his daughter is almost killed in a grenade attack outside the Abbey Theatre. In Belfast he is caught up in violent clashes between marching Protestants and protesting Catholics. His mother's wrong-side-of-the-blanket relations in Derry have left him disinheritance hassles and an old foe who intends to make them terminal. In the final outing for Delaney, Republican and Loyalist enmities are the historical backdrop, but again he must rely on the ad hoc Kiwi approach to problem-solving that ensured his family survived security threats in Sydney, Israel, his native West Auckland and Wellington. His long and modestly undistinguished career reaches a final solution to both his origins and his family's survival. It is a win/lose scenario - and the loser dies.
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