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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Traitor by Stephen Daisley

First published in Australia in 2010; published by New York Review of Books on March 18, 2014

Traitor is the powerful story of a man's life before and after he makes the fateful decision suggested by the book's title. It is also a fiercely honest character study told in spare prose that is often exquisite.

Traitor begins with Sergeant David Monroe awakening on a hospital barge near Lemnos in 1915. He escaped death on that occasion but, 50 years later in New Zealand, he is approaching a natural death. Reviewing the files of potential subversives as a national security precaution (New Zealand is about to commit troops to the Vietnam War), the police question Monroe about his desertion from the military in 1915 and the assistance he gave to an escaping prisoner of war on Lemnos. Initially sentenced to death for treason (a sentence the Australians, who had the only rifles, refused to carry out), Monroe served out the war as a stretcher bearer before receiving a full pardon. Since then, he has been a shepherd, living alone, rarely speaking to anyone but his horse and his dog. Yet the interrogation opens a floodgate of memories.

The memories force frequent time shifts in the novel from the present to scattered moments in the past. Some pre-war memories are of his parents. Some post-war memories are of a woman named Sarah, whose son died in David's arms during the war. Some memories are of Sarah's daughter, in later post-war years. The most important memories are of David's time during the war with Mahmoud and their conversations about life and fate and free will, about right and wrong, religion and faith. They tell each other stories and try to find their meanings. Ultimately, Mahmoud helps David find meaning in a life that is surrounded by death. "You are God," Mahmoud tells David. "We are all gods." Stephen Daisley leaves it to the reader to work out the meaning behind Mahmoud's philosophy.

The first time David sees Mahmoud, he is stunned to find a Turk who speaks perfect English trying to save the life of a fallen Australian. The next time he sees Mahmoud, they are both in a field hospital in Lemnos. Mahmoud and his devotion to Islam make an impression on David and the two enemies begin to treat each other as friends. The degree to which David is mentally stable is not always clear, but it is clear that the ordinary and extraordinary suffering he endures in the war has taken its toll on him. It is also clear that, while Mahmoud is regarded by David's nation as an enemy, he is also David's salvation. "You are the cure within the pain," Mahmoud tells him. "The loyalty in betrayal."

Daisley sets this atmospheric novel in its time by having David read the headlines on the newspapers that line his cottage walls. The technique reminds us that history is both momentous (war) and trivial (rummage sales). It also reinforces the image of David as an isolated man who is bombarded by unstoppable memories. "To remember is the way into purgatory and perhaps too, the way out," David tells Sarah, and that is Traitor's defining lesson. At its heart, Traitor is a story about healing.

David tells Sarah she is "encased in the prison of your grief" and while that description applies just as well to David, the story offers the hope of redemption. Traitor is written in a somber tone, sometimes in fragmented sentences that represent the nature of memory and thought. The reliability of some of David's story is questionable (his memories of Sarah, in particular, are inconsistent) but there is fundamental truth in David's story even if his memories are inaccurate. This is a sad story but the sadness is not oppressive.

In addition to its fine prose and close study of its primary characters, Traitor is worth reading for its recognition that core values of human decency and the ability to connect with another person transcend nationality and religion and the politics of the moment. Yet the story reminds us that values come with a price. The only thing worse than being true to your values is having none. It is possible to question the decisions David makes in the confusion and agony of war, but Daisley also makes it possible to understand and accept David without judgment, and to care about him.

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