Two years ago, Michael Bennett flung open the doors of the crime-writers’ club of Aotearoa with his first thriller, Better the Blood. Its star was a strong Māori woman: Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman, an Auckland police officer torn between her heritage and the Pākehā power structures she worked within. This uneasiness became a crisis when she joined a team investigating a fast-moving sequence of ritualistic murders, Tāmaki Makarau’s first serial killer. It didn’t take long for Hana to work out that they were dealing with a highly intelligent person broken by rage over a historical colonial atrocity against Māori. As she got closer to solving the case, he directed his wrath at her.
Bennett’s debut provided a fresh new perspective, and his experience as a veteran TV and film screenwriter bled through into the book’s plain-speaking, expository style. Unusually for fiction, the book included Māori words and phrases with footnotes of translation, part of the author’s mission to broaden the use of te reo. Bennett earned wide acclaim for Better the Blood here and in international markets, and his was judged best first novel at the Ngaio Marsh Awards.
By then, he must have been well into creating this next instalment of Hana’s adventures. The title suggests an endless theme: there will be blood, then more blood. But Return to Blood, set six months after the first case, isn’t as dark as its predecessor. At its core is Hana’s return home to Tātā Bay, the rural coastal town where her dear old dad Eru still lives, near the marae. Eru is a terrific character, quiet, warm, nursing a secret.
Hana, who has quit the force and may be suffering from PTSD, is in limbo, doing odd jobs as an insurance fraud investigator, running through the dunes before dawn each day, helping kids get their driving licences, absorbing Eru’s gentle wisdom.
Her teenage daughter Addison, who lives in Auckland with her non-binary friend, PLUS 1 (both from the BTB cast), make regular visits. Via Hana, Bennett shares a recipe for delectable mussel fritters. It’s a lovely, fleeting tranquillity that can’t last. The dunes are already tainted by a crime from 20 years earlier, when the bound skeleton of Paige, Hana’s school mate who’d gone missing, was found. A local man who took responsibility for her murder died some time earlier in prison.
Out of the blue, Tātā Bay’s peace collapses again when Addison stumbles across the remains of another tightly bound female in the dunes. Police eventually match the skeleton to an Auckland street girl who went missing four years earlier. Did the wrong man go to jail?
To give us some answers, there’s a ghost afoot. Return to Blood gives voice to the girl found in the dunes. Kiri, a bright, sensitive Māori teenager with a rough backstory, was known to police through their at-risk youth group in Auckland. As the police try to solve her murder, Kiri reaches out to Addison in dreams and visions, a supernatural connection known as “matakite”. She is quite persistent. In the corporeal world, some nasty episodes ramp up the tension, especially Hana’s encounters with a thug who uses vulnerable kids to do his dirty work.
Bennett indulges in some socio-political digs. As Hana stands before Paige’s memorial in the dunes, she thinks about causes of death much more prevalent than murder, like “diseases caused by the greed of big tobacco and alcohol businesses”. One character, who is highly unstable, is addicted to watching DVDs of sermons by a local televangelist, “a self-proclaimed bishop with a large following based in his sprawling, ornate quasi-cathedral in South Auckland”.
One small quibble. The footnotes at the bottom of the pages distract the eye; perhaps a separate glossary would offer a more reader-friendly alternative. And is it really necessary to explain words like “ute” and “smoko room”, presumably for overseas readers?
But Return to Blood feels like a confident, convincing work in a crowded genre. Hana has become more rounded and interesting, and the addition of Eru, who exudes authentic mana, is a delight. The ending is unexpected, too – Better the Blood’s outcome seemed more inevitable. We should assume Bennett is already developing Hana’s next bloody episode, with hints she may return to the force and the big smoke. And what, leave Eru behind? Don’t rush, Hana.
