It's in the blood

Michael Bennett returns his Maori detective to her roots ina convincing, highly anticipated second novel.

- LINDA HERRICK

RETURN TO BLOOD

by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster, $37.99)

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.