Taranaki Stories
Showing stories tagged as novelist.
by Rhonda Bartle on 05 November 2009
Tim Chadwick's father grew up on South Road, Hawera, next to the Morrieson house and often told tales of the author arriving home at dawn, in his great lump of a car, so boozed up he would fall sleep at the wheel.
It only added to the curious shine of the man's reputation, and a glimpse of Ronald Hugh Morrieson's face at the attic window, would stay with Chadwick for all time....
by Rhonda Bartle on 05 November 2009
Some say Morrieson's books are a mix of popular genres from Mark Twain to Ed McBain, while others see Erskine Caldwell and Raymond Chandler in the plots.
Even the author himself wasn't sure. Of The Scarecrow he said, “It's a kind of thriller, I suppose, but I think it's also a work of art - at least I hope it is.”
The Scarecrow established his trademark style - a blend of...
by Rhonda Bartle on 05 November 2009
Malcolm Robinson and Ronald Morrieson grew up pretty much joined at the hip. Two parts of the Terrible Four along with Gerald Patterson and Len Flavell, Robinson describes his mate Morrieson as a chameleon, 'a total charmer'.
“We were an average group of 12 to 14 year-olds having tons of fun on our bicycles,” he says of their teenage years. “Morrieson's most valued possession was a...
by Rhonda Bartle on 05 November 2009
In small-town Hawera, he spent his nights drinking, gambling, womanising, playing jazz and generally raising hell in dance halls and pubs. Rumours abounded about the excesses in his life. Yet he lived and died in the very house where he was born and only ventured out of Taranaki on less than half a dozen occasions.
Too much for one small town
Morrieson was born in 1922 and came to...