Deep Beyond the Reef: A True Story of Madness and Murder in the South Pacific [Illustrated] [Paperback]

It’s a marvellous book, full of strange characters and bizarre behaviour, its narrative obviously fuelled by great passion.

A fascinating story...very easy to read...hard to put down.

The brutal double murder of Fiji Red Cross director John Scott and his partner Greg Scrivener in 2001 shocked several nations and attracted a huge amount of media attention, partly because of John Scott's role as go-between in the hostage crisis during the George Speight-led coup in 2000. Drawn back to Fiji from his new home in England by the tragedy, Owen Scott embarks on a quest for the truth not only about the then unsolved crime and the whirlwind of rumour and innuendo it created, but also about his own life as the son of a prominent, charismatic but domineering father, and the darkness at the centre of an outwardly idyllic tropical childhood. From the fading colonial splendour of plantation life to the violent political coups and ruthless media exploitation of the modern era, this is a true and remarkable story of love, death and memory, set against the backdrop of a troubled Pacific paradise.

Deep Beyond the Reef started out as a diary of a very particular six weeks after the murders of my brother and his partner. My brother’s son and I had a very concentrated time together in Fiji trying to sort out the mess. The experiences we had were unusual.

I completed the diary a year after the murders. A friend asked if she could read it. I agreed, not thinking what I had written was necessarily for public consumption. She then asked if she could show it to someone she knew at Penguin. That turned out to be Geoff Walker. Geoff read the diary and said if I could write some ‘background material’ he thought there might be a ‘book’ in it. ‘Background material’ had been brewing in my head for years but I didn't know where to start.

In the meantime, a second 'book' began to take shape. It was to chronicle everything leading up to the murder trial: an event none of us was confident was even going to happen. A massive email correspondence was taking place between the prosecutor and myself, and also Greg’s family. My computer was becoming full of information, until finally, with the trial, I had two year's worth of experience and judicial material to work with.

I then attempted to turn the whole thing into a coherent chronology, going off to a remote island to start writing. I was very lucky that the prosecutor, (a NZer) gave me permission to reproduce our correspondence. It charted a friendship starting in print, developing in person when we finally met. I was privy to a huge amount of information, which would normally be confidential. My judicial account of the murders is effectively a 'behind-the-scenes' one. While in Fiji, I also researched and interviewed people about my family - in particular about my father. The eight months spent in the land of my birth was a practical and spiritual journey on many levels.

Then I began writing the third ‘book’ once I was back in NZ. It was the hardest. At the beginning of 2004, I locked myself away in North Canterbury for two months and became a hermit, vicariously living my family’s colonial past through old letters and papers I had found.

Finally, I sewed together the experiences of an extraordinary two and a half years and sent it off to Geoff Walker at Penguin in March of 2004.

Actor and writer Owen Scott is the younger brother of John Scott, one of the murder victims, and the son of a high-ranking pre-independence barrister and diplomat, Maurice Scott CBE, later to become Speaker of Fiji's Legislative Council. As a fourth generation white Fijian Owen has a deep knowledge of local custom, culture, politics and protocol; all of which play a part in this story.