Review by Booklist Review
After facing down New Zealand's first serial killer (in Better the Blood, 2022), Māori detective Hana Westerman has left the Auckland force and returned home to rural Tātā Bay. She's fully occupied with helping her father revitalize their community until a picnic with her daughter ends with the discovery of a body in the dunes. Hana recognizes the signs of foul play, and soon her former boss and ex-husband, Jaye, arrives with Hana's friend, DSS Lorraine Delaney, to investigate. The victim turns out to be Kiri Thomas, a teen who was in Lorraine's Youth at Risk program until she disappeared four years ago. The MO is disturbingly similar to Tama Josephs' murder of another Tātā Bay girl fifteen years ago. However, Tama was long dead when Kiri was killed; and when a local witness opens up to her, Hana can't resist the draw to investigate. Bennett highlights Hana's struggle to reconcile the pull of her Māori roots against her inner cop, a struggle that serves as a compelling backdrop for this twisty, well-crafted mystery.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Bennett's busy follow-up to 2022's Better Than Blood, Maori detective Hana Westerman has quit the Auckland Criminal Investigation Branch to return to her rural hometown of Tata Bay and live with her father, Eru. When Hana's 18-year-old daughter, Addison, discovers a woman's skeleton in the sand dunes near their new home, Hana is drawn back into detective work. The deceased, Kiri Thomas, is a 17-year-old Maori woman with a history of drug addiction who went missing four years earlier. Almost immediately, Hana thinks of her high school acquaintance, Paige Meadows, who was strangled and buried in the same dunes more than 20 years ago. A Maori man was tried and convicted for Paige's murder, but Eru always doubted the man's guilt, and passed his skepticism on to Hana. Working as a private sleuth, Hana pokes around for potential connections between the deaths, and eventually uncovers secrets that put her directly in harm's way. Bennett's twists crackle, but he hampers the narrative's pacing with an overabundance of perspective shifts. Here's hoping the next entry marks a return to form. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two decades after Māori detective Hana Westerman investigated the killing of a young woman whose body was found in the dunes of New Zealand's Tātā Bay, Hana's daughter discovers the bones of another young woman in the same patch of sand. Tormented by the first case, which ended with what likely was the wrongful conviction of a former gang member who died in prison, Hana quit the Auckland police force and moved back home to Tātā Bay to escape "the darkness." But given a chance to revisit that case, she becomes determined to find the killer of the recent victim, Kiri, a troubled teen who disappeared four years ago. Lacking the authority to pursue the truth in an official capacity, the ex-cop receives only mixed support from former colleagues including her ex-husband and a female detective to whom she must prove that the same killer took the lives of both women. The darkness she fled envelopes her entire family, including her ailing adoptive father, who has always believed the ex-gang member was innocent, and her daughter, Addison. Boasting a multilayered protagonist, this sequel to Bennett's debut, Better the Blood (2023), immerses itself in Māori culture, ranging from mysticism to the "unavoidable tension" between traditional and modern lawmaking in New Zealand. Bennett, a successful Māori filmmaker, may spend more time than is necessary on Addison's fraught relationships with her nonbinary partner and her former boyfriend. But everyone is an integral part of the same ethnic fabric; in this smart, beguiling, and ultimately surprising mystery, their ties matter. A skillfully rendered Māori crime story. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
