Hana Westerman Thriller

An absorbing, clever debut thriller that speaks to the longstanding injustices faced by New Zealand's indigenous peoples, by an acclaimed Maori screenwriter and director A tenacious Maori detective, Hana Westerman is juggling single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man ritualistically hanging in a secret room and a puzzling inward-curving inscription. Delving into the investigation after a second, apparently unrelated, death, she uncovers a chilling connection to a historic crime: 160 years before, during the brutal and bloody British colonization of New Zealand, a troop of colonial soldiers unjustly executed a Maori chief. Hana recognizes the murders as utu-the Maori tradition of rebalancing, whether for a personal slight or, now, for a crime committed eight generations ago. There were six soldiers in the British troop, and since descendants of two of the soldiers have been killed, four more potential murders remain. Hana realizes she is hunting New Zealand's first serial killer. The pursuit soon becomes frighteningly personal, recalling the painful event, two decades before, when Hana, then a new cop, was part of a police team sent to end by force a land rights occupation by indigenous peoples on the same ancestral mountain where the chief was killed, calling once more into questionher loyalty to her roots. Worse still, a genealogical link to the British soldiers brings the case terrifyingly close to Hana's own family. Twisty and thoughtprovoking, Better the Blood is the debut of a remarkable new talent in crime fiction.

From the author of “Better the Blood”, the gripping second novel in a crime series starring Maori detective Hana Westerman, in which the discovery of human bones in the dunes of New Zealand upends a long-ago murder conviction. After the perils of a case that landed much too close to home, Hana Westerman turned in her badge and abandoned her career as a detective in the Auckland CIB. Hoping that civilian life will offer her the opportunity to rest and recalibrate, she returns to her hometown of Tata Bay, where she moves back in with her beloved father Eru. Yet the memories of the past are everywhere, and as she goes for her daily run on the beach, Hana passes a local monument to Grace, an old classmate, who was murdered more than twenty years ago and hidden in the dunes overlooking the sea. A Maori man with a previous record was convicted of the crime, although Eru never believed he was guilty. When another young woman's skeleton is found in the sands, Hana soon finds herself in over her head again. Investigators suspect that this is Kiri Thomas, a young Maori woman who disappeared four years ago, after battling years of drug addiction. Hana and her daughter Addison are increasingly captivated by the story behind this unsolved crime, but without the official police force behind her, Hana must risk compromising her own peace and freedom if justice is to be served. Full of vivid characters and startling revelations, “Return to Blood” is a winning continuation of the story of Hana Westerman.