Dull inside and out

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 14

Dull inside and out

The Big Huey. By Greg Newbold. Collins. 1982. 256 pp. $15.95 (paper), $23.95 (hardback). Reviewed by A. J. Curry)

Sub-titled “An inmate’s candid account of five years inside New Zealand's prisons" this book is about a sentence of five years imprisonment which the author

served principally at Paremoremo and Hautu Prison Farm.

I found the book disappointing. Greg Newbold was convicted of selling drugs. He makes no bones about the fact that he did deal in drugs; on the contrary, he became "successful and enterprising in dealing circles." He was convicted, according to him, on false evidence given by the police. Prisons, it is well known, are full of such people.

The first part of his sentence of seven and a half years was served at Paremoremo, New Zealand’s maximum security prison. The chapters dealing with his reaction to that prison, its way of life.

and its inmates, are among the best in the book. But then he is transferred to Hautu Prison Farm to serve the remainder of his sentence and the book deteriorates

rapidly. It becomes no more than a tedious catalogue of the most minute details qf prison life which would be dull, inside or outside the walls.

The dust jacket promises “intriguingly frank" accounts of his friendships with

"notorious prisoners.” including Arthur Allan Thomas and Terry Clark (alias Sinclair)'. There are three lines or so about Terry Clark which tell us nothing whatsoever about him, and not very much more about Thomas. What we are left with is a collection of grubby tales about grubby people, couched for the most part in grubby language. I do

not doubt that things happened as the author recounts them, but is this a reason for publishing them? They began as entries in a journal, and to my mind this is where they should have stayed.