Better the blood
"A tenacious Māori detective, Hana Westerman juggles 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 int...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic,
2023.
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| Edition: | First Grove Atlantic hardcover editon. |
| Series: | Bennett, Michael, 1964- Hana Westerman thriller ;
1. |
| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | "A tenacious Māori detective, Hana Westerman juggles 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 Māori Chief. Hana realizes that the murders are utu -- the Māori tradition of rebalancing for the 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 is thus hunting New Zealand's first serial killer. The pursuit soon becomes frighteningly personal, recalling the painful event when as a new cop two decades before, Hana 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 question her loyalty to her roots. Worse still, a genealogical link to the British soldiers brings the case terrifyingly close to Hana's own family"-- |
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| Item Description: | "First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Simon Schuster UK Ltd." -- title page verso. |
| Physical Description: | 329 pages ; 24 cm. |
| ISBN: | 9780802162656 9780802160607 0802160603 |
| Author Notes: | Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning screenwriter, director, and author whose films have been selections at major festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and New York. His nonfiction book, In Dark Places , which explored an infamous miscarriage of justice, won awards, and his young adult graphic novel, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas , was a finalist for the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards. |
