Better the Blood

A tight and tense police investigation that brilliantly integrates Māori culture and history. When a gruesome murder in contemporary Auckland, with the victim found hanging in a secret room within an abandoned building, leads to another murder, Māori detective Hana Westerman realizes she may be on the trail of New Zealand’s first serial killer. But what connects the victims? A daguerreotype from New Zealand’s bloody, colonial past—plus texts and images the killer sends her—provide Hana with a terrifying road map to what’s ahead if she can’t stop him. Through Hana, author Michael Bennett (Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue) connects the past and the present, both in New Zealand’s history and within Hana’s own life. To find the killer; keep her family safe, especially her university-age, politically charged daughter; and face a painful incident from her youth, Hana must undergo a transformation. And the woman we meet at the end of the narrative is indeed far different from the one who begins it. This is crime fiction at its best: well-paced, richly characterized, and fearless in confronting the pain of colonialism.