Return to Blood: A Hana Westerman Thriller

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)