Arson, murder, sex and hair-raising midnight adventures at a town called Tainuia Junction. It's Friday when the silver-tongued Wes Pennington and his sidekick Cyril Kidman come to town with a trick to play on the local bookmaker. But there's already other skullduggery afoot …not to speak of the Te Whakinga Kid, a Zorro nut and the wildest comic ever to ride the ranges.

Author Biography

Ronald Hugh Morrieson, who died in 1972, was a novelist and short-story writer who spent all his life in Hawera in south Taranaki. He earned his living as a musician and music teacher, playing in local dance bands. Morrieson wrote four novels: The Scarecrow (1963), Came a Hot Friday (1964), The Predicament (1975) and Pallet on the Floor (1976). Morrieson once commented that he might be 'another of those poor buggers who gets discovered when they're dead'. And so it turned out. He struggled to get published, and the majority of his writing was published posthumously.