Better the Blood is the new novel from award winning screenwriter, director, and author Michael Te Arawa Bennett. The opening of the novel is set in New Zealand in 1860. A group of British soldiers pose in front of the hanging corpse of a Māori man. The next scene takes us to modern day New Zealand and we meet Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman. Hana has used her own status as a Māori woman to convince another young Māori woman to testify against a young man who drugged and raped her. The case is a slam dunk and the young man is convicted. The sentencing is a horror show. The judge proceeds to do what we have seen many times in real life. He laments that this act of bad behavior has harmed this young man’s future as a lawyer and as an athlete. So he sentences the man to only a month of prison. Hana is horrified by the injustice. While she is fuming over the trial she gets a strange video emailed to her. The email is of a building exterior. She and her partner are able to identify the room and locate a hanged man. Since the man had been walled up after death it is obvious that it is foul play.
Book Review - Better The Blood by Michael Bennet
Book Review - Better The Blood by Michael…
Book Review - Better The Blood by Michael Bennet
Better the Blood is the new novel from award winning screenwriter, director, and author Michael Te Arawa Bennett. The opening of the novel is set in New Zealand in 1860. A group of British soldiers pose in front of the hanging corpse of a Māori man. The next scene takes us to modern day New Zealand and we meet Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman. Hana has used her own status as a Māori woman to convince another young Māori woman to testify against a young man who drugged and raped her. The case is a slam dunk and the young man is convicted. The sentencing is a horror show. The judge proceeds to do what we have seen many times in real life. He laments that this act of bad behavior has harmed this young man’s future as a lawyer and as an athlete. So he sentences the man to only a month of prison. Hana is horrified by the injustice. While she is fuming over the trial she gets a strange video emailed to her. The email is of a building exterior. She and her partner are able to identify the room and locate a hanged man. Since the man had been walled up after death it is obvious that it is foul play.