Some of you can stop reading now: like Paul Holmes, I'm Mahon's man through and through. In 1979 I had just flown around the world at the impressionable age of 12, partly by Air New Zealand DC10.
"Erebus", as we all know the air disaster in shorthand, was perhaps the first grown-up news event I followed, from the missing plane on that November evening to the famous "orchestrated litany of lies" line in Justice Mahon's report. It was a JFK moment, I recall remembering where I was and that everyone knew someone who knew someone ...
Holmes has fully assimilated the Mahon orthodoxy in his book. He has written it as an open letter, seeking the parliamentary exoneration of Capt Jim Collins and his flight crew, whose reputations were so callously put through the shredder by Air New Zealand management.
Holmes details the rerouting by Air New Zealand navigators of the flight computer which placed Mt Erebus volcano on the flight path, and the airline's attempts at first to cover this up and then to pretend that there was an overriding altitude restriction under which the navigation blunder wouldn't have mattered.
When he talks of Capt Collins' family members, the "daughters" of the title, it's straight off his old TV show. Remember when the picture on Holmes used to go all fuzzy while violins played in the background?
But give the man his due: he's a terrific communicator. He slices, dices and purees the technical stuff and spoonfeeds it to the reader - "here comes the plane" - to the point where anyone can understand it.
Here's a fellow who knows his audience: technically-challenged, politically complacent, breakfast-show middle New Zealand will finally "get" Erebus and why it matters. The human interest side is also fully explored.
As for the technical side, there's nothing here that has not been fully discussed by Mahon's report and his later book Verdict on Erebus and Gordon Vette's Impact Erebus, on all of which Holmes draws heavily. His conclusions, which are really political rather than technical, are worth pondering. After Mahon so roundly rejected the first accident report of Chief Inspector of Air Accidents Ron Chippindale, I always had Chippindale down as a thickie: Holmes has him as a conspirator.
The prime minister of the time, Robert Muldoon, lurks in the background of Holmes' perceived plot as a shadowy Mr Big, manipulating events to his government's own advancement, but not counting on Mahon's honesty and courage.
Of course, these people are now dead, no more able to defend their reputations than Capt Collins. It rather begs the question, where was Paul Holmes all these years? Too busy grilling Dennis Conner?
Could "New Zealand's most respected broadcaster" have discovered Erebus a little earlier?
Holmes' book gives the reader pause to reconsider the ramifications of those events so long ago (after all, one should never lose faith in a cause until Paul Holmes champions it!). Holmes sees the best outcome of his book as the rehabilitation of Capt Collins; I'm not so sure.
Those who knew Collins know and understand the truth. Peter Mahon, hounded out of office by the Establishment, is now also almost universally posthumously admired.
Where truth really needs an airing is in the corridors of Air New Zealand Ltd: they could be forgiven for their small error which led to a big disaster if they would only admit it and apologise, but their continuing denial of their "orchestrated litany of lies" gets harder and harder to forgive with every passing year and decade.
• Peter Dowden is a Dunedin writer.
Author talk
Paul Holmes will be at Dunedin Public Library, Moray Pl, on Wednesday, September 28 at 5.30pm to discuss Daughters of Erebus.
Tickets for the free event are available by phoning (03) 474-3690 or emailing library@dcc.govt.nz
