Steve Braunias is an award-winning New Zealand journalist, author, columnist and editor. OPINION The other day I took the train from Britomart to Panmure to interview a man convicted of murder. It was the second time he’d been jailed for killing someone: when he was 20, he killed a man in a fight, and was found guilty of manslaughter.
Throughout the interview I wrestled with the issue of whether or not I hated him. Journalists observe, that’s all; I like it like that, staying as still as a lizard and just watching, listening, not really feeling anything other than fascination at the things people do to each other. My latest book The Survivors : Stories of Death and Desperation is a fascinated gape at bad things happening – the murder of a police officer, the murder of someone desperate for love, the murders of two babies.
It’s the third book in my trilogy of true-crime narratives . Third, as in final book; as I write in the introduction, “I don’t think I can take it anymore”. This is the last time I put together a collection of crime stories in book form, and part of why I want out is that sometime last year I began to feel just how disconnected my life was from the people I was writing about.
Not a crim. Not a fighter. Not a tough guy.
It shouldn’t make any difference – I don’t think they choose judges or criminal lawyers on their fight record – but it got to the point where I felt totally alienated from the people I was studying closely in court . It s.