A Taste of Marton

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Local writer rides again

It’s nigh on a quarter century since one-time Marton town clerk Trevor White handed in his badge. In 1989, when Mr White retired from a career of “pen-pushing”, he was secretary/treasurer of the Central Districts Catchment Board, subsequently absorbed by the Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council; now known as Horizons. Since then, he’s devoted much of his time to writing and publishing novels.With three contemporary Scotland Yard thrillers to his credit, his latest offering swings way west - American west - cactus and coyotes. What, you ask, does an unassuming former Marton civil servant know about the proverbial bloodlust of the West or the forbidding pall of lawlessness that casts intractable shadow over all but the strong? It turns out - with the help of the Internet - quite a lot. Set in Texas of the 1860s, the 245 page Cowboy to Freedom is, Mr White claims, “semi-factual”. Sure, the central chraracter is the kind of guy who can weather the vicissitudes of a cowboy tale - tall, blonde - with unerring aim in both hands for the purgative shoot-out - but Mr White’s administrative background isn’t so easily drubbed in the telling. The growing pangs of a rationally planned, pioneer town aren’t entirely obscured by black-hearted types whose habitual waywardness “moves the story along”. There’s scope too to introduce the odd, little snippets of fact that fall out of the Internet basket; strengthening the story’s credibility and bolstering its historical interest. A survivor of writer’s block that led to one volume of his detective trilogy taking six years to complete, Mr White brings a surer hand to the writing of Cowboy to Freedom. Speaking of the estimated 300 hours he spent writing his gunslinger saga, Mr White is as assured as any Western hero downing a shot of rye and hitching his gunbelt ready to best more conspicuous evil. “It went nice and smooth”, he said. “It was a pleasure writing it.”