Hokianga (or the Hokianga) is an area surrounding the Hokianga Harbour, also known as The Hokianga River, a long estuarine drowned valley on the west coast in the north of the North Island of New Zealand.

The original name still used by local Māori is Te Kohanga o Te Tai Tokerau ("the nest of the northern people") or Te Puna o Te Ao Marama ("the wellspring of moonlight"). The full name of the Harbour is Te Hokianga-nui-a-Kupe – "the place of Kupe's great return".

The Hokianga is in the Far North District, which is in the Northland Region, and is 85 kilometres northwest of Whangarei and 25 kilometres west of Kaikohe. The estuary extends inland for 30 kilometres from the Tasman Sea. It is navigable for small craft for much of its length, although there is a bar across the mouth.

Twelve thousand years ago Hokianga was a river valley flanked by steep bush-clad hills. As the last ice age regressed, the dramatic rise in sea level slowly flooded the valley turning it into a tidal, saltwater, harbour with abundant sheltered deep water anchorages. This was the harbour that Kupe left from, and in 1822 saw the first European timber entrepreneurs.

Robert Beattie, a Wichita lawyer, is the author of the nonfiction book Nightmare in Wichita.

It is about BTK, a serial killer in Wichita, Kansas who created the name BTK after his modus operandi, "Bind Them, Torture Them, Kill Them". Dennis Rader started sending out letters to media again after hearing about the book. Right before he was going to publish it, Dennis Rader was arrested then convicted as the BTK Killer, a.k.a. the BTK strangler, and Beattie quickly wrote an epilogue. Rader murdered 10 people in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991 but evaded law enforcement until 2005.

Beattie is also known for interviewing serial killer Charles Manson for a class project as a professor at Newman University in Wichita, which stirred controversy and brought media attention to him.Language of Evil is about a murder in Douglas County, Kansas.

Beattie ran unsuccessfully for the office of Kansas Secretary of State in 2006. He testified against the use of polygraph.

It's an ugly story, but one that is well worth telling, and Beattie tells it well. It's also one that I, however slightly, was personally involved with.