
In 1992, builders tearing down a house in Auckland's Devonport came across a skeleton. It turned out that 60 years before, Scottish nurse Elspeth Kerr had run a private nursing home from the property. The local community at the time was shocked when the well-respected nurse was arrested for the attempted murder of her foster daughter, Betty, and rumours flew that she might have killed her husband, Charles, and at least one other patient. In this extract from a new book about Kerr by true-crime author Scott Bainbridge, suspicious detectives decide to exhume the body of Charles Kerr.
Inspector James Cummings was New Zealand's top detective. In 1920, he solved the murder of Ponsonby postmaster Augustus Braithwaite by using fingerprint technology, thus securing the British Empire's first ever capital conviction using fingerprint science and sending Dennis Gunn to the gallows. Several months later, Cummings investigated the murder of farmer Sydney Eyre in Pukekawa, and determined the killer had ridden up on a horse and fired the fatal shot through a window. Cummings noticed one horseshoe had a distinctive characteristic, causing the horse to overstep. All horses in the vicinity were checked, and one with an unusual horseshoe was found. It was owned by a farmhand named Samuel Thorne, who had once worked on the victim's farm. Thorne was convicted and sentenced to hang. Later in 1920, renowned author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited New Zealand and, when told of Cummings' feats, proclaimed him the "real Sherlock Holmes".
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A hint of mermaids
Erin Palmisano's latest novel once again has food and romance at the heart of its well-plotted story.

Execution over innovation
Big and bold ideas are fine, but being the best beats being first.

Something's wrong with all of them
Engaging dissection of the 20th-century novel likely to send the reader in search for the book under discussion.

Cell warfare
A NZ trial using immunotherapy to beat a form of blood cancer is expanding after promising results – and it's hoped the 'gold standard' treatment will soon be widely available.

The virus that stole all the smells
In this edited extract from The Forgotten Sense, Jonas Olofsson traces the rise in anosmia as a result of Covid-19 infections.

When caring is ‘woke'
Some years ago, I sat in a small plane circling over Punta del Este in Uruguay. There was a delay and we sat in tense silence until we began our descent. Outside the tiny airport, a taxi ferried us past private Lear jets; these had been the cause of the hold-up. The driver pointed to two planes side by side. \"This one is a Trump plane.\"

Getting along swimmingly
The presenters of Endangered Species Aotearoa spend a fair bit of time on and in the water in the second season.

That clingy feeling
Our pets display the same types of attachment behaviours as we do, or so it seems.

The famous furred
A peaceful little spot in LA is the final resting place for the pets of some of Hollywood's biggest names.

Gone girl
She wandered in on Thursday morning looking very wan, and climbed into her bed. I sat on the edge and stroked her back.