Tito Ihaka

Tito Ihaka, the unkempt, overweight Maori cop, was demoted to Sergeant due to insubordination and pigheadedness. He investigates the unsolved killing of a seventeen-year-old girl at an election night party in a ritzy villa near Auckland. Ihaka is also embroiled in a very personal mystery. A freelance journalist has stumbled across information that Ihaka's father, Jimmy, a trade union firebrand and renegade Marxist, didn't die of natural causes. The stories weave themselves into an exciting climax in an atmosphere of political maneuvering and intrigue surrounding the United States' confrontation with New Zealand over its anti-nuclear stance.

Maori cop Tito Ihaka, "unkempt, overweight, intemperate, unruly, unorthodox and profane ", is a stubborn investigator with an uncanny instinct for the truth. He hunts a shadowy hit-man who could have several notches on his belt, including that of an undercover cop. To complicate matters Ihaka becomes involved with a female suspect who could hold the key to everything.