A soldier and a bigamist, a family man and a fraudster, Etienne Jean Brocher led an extraordinary life in 19-century France, North Africa and New Zealand. Along the way he collected aliases, prison sentences, and enemies as he slipped from town to town, escaping debts and family duties. Ultimately, though, he faced the gallows in a double-murder trial that rocked New Zealand's 'dream society'. Now his astonishing story - untold in book form - is revealed. Drawing on French military archives, family records, and newspaper reports from across colonial New Zealand, as well as Brocher's own handwritten account, this absorbing biography untangles the complex trails Brocher left behind him in colonial towns and in the public imagination. (True Crime Biography)