Better the Blood by Michael Bennett

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on January 10, 2023

The pattern of British colonialism is ugly. White colonists pronounce themselves superior to “uncivilized” natives. Using their superior firepower, they supplant indigenous people in the territories they colonize. In New Zealand, the Māori were a peaceful people who saw themselves as caretakers of land that belonged to all Māori collectively. The British took their land and punished Māori who resisted, sometimes by hanging them. Efforts to restore stolen land through the legal system, if successful at all, result in the restoration of about 2% of the stolen land to the Māori.

Set in Aukland, Better than Blood is a police thriller that tells a story grounded in cultural identity. Hana Westerman is a Māori. When she was a new police officer, her white superiors thought it would be smart to send her to the front line of a police effort to suppress a Māori protest. Hana knew the Māori had legitimate grievances and felt conflicted when she carted off an older woman as the Māori derided her for siding with the whites.

Years later, when she is in her thirties, Hana has the rank of Detective Senior with the Aukland CIB. Someone sends her a video from an anonymous proxy. When she investigates the abandoned house in the video, she discovers a dead body in a hidden room. The death is the first of a series. Each time, Hana receives a video that tells her where a body will be found.

This isn’t a whodunit. The reader knows that the killer is a Māori lawyer named Raki. Hana’s daughter Addison took a class that Raki was teaching. Raki avoids killing innocent people, but he has his own definition of innocence. Hana’s task is to find the thread that connects the victims. That task requires Hana to work harder than the reader. The opening scene provides at least a rough idea of how the victims might be related.

Better than Blood fails to develop sufficient tension to stand as a successful thriller, despite scenes that place Hana and her daughter at risk. An early subplot about an entitled young white guy who decides to mess up Hana’s life disappears soon after it surfaces. I could have lived without Raki’s revealing dreams of his mother (and his encounter with her in the afterlife), just as I can always live without descriptions of dreams (and the afterlife).

Still, any novel that calls attention to social injustice has value. Hana’s conflict between her ethnic identity and her service to a government that has long oppressed her people adds interest to her character, as does her ex-husband’s position as her boss. I appreciated the way the novel ends. And I like the message that injustice cannot be a tool that is wielded against injustice. While the novel lacks suspense, it tells an interesting story through a character whose personal journey is more compelling than the underlying plot.

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