Softly Calls the Devil by Chris Blake

There are now plenty of both Australian and New Zealand crime novels set in small regional towns. While the Australian brand are often set in sun-bleached outback towns or equally bright coastal communities, the New Zealand version always feels a little darker and more brooding. New Zealand writers manage to put stress the noir element of rural noir in books like Tom Baragwanath’s Paper Cage and its follow-up Lucky Thing or Geoff Parkes’ When The Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole. Chris Blake’s new novel Softly Calls the Devil is set in the coastal town of Haast, on the very tip of New Zealand’s South Island. Haast is not a resort town – surrounded by the snow-capped Southern Alps, lowland swamps, dense forest and of course, as with all rural noir, full of secrets.

Ex-detective Matt Buchanan has spent a year as the lone policeman in the small town of Haast after some disastrous and scarring events in Auckland (presumably related to his adventures in Blake’s debut The Sound of Her Voice published under the pseudonym Nathan Blackwell). But his idyll is shattered when his predecessor, Gus, is found shot and this death is quickly followed by a suicide. Buchanan is specifically not part of the murder investigation but he finds that he cannot help himself. Gus was re-investigating the 1978 murders of a family in the forest outside of Haast and by digging into that case himself, Buchanan slowly starts to uncover a much more complex story of drug running, biker gangs and a possible cult.

Blake gives a great feel for the town of Haast, its inhabitants and the landscape of the lower half of the South Island of New Zealand. Main character Matt Buchanan clearly has some baggage but is also trying to get his life together and finding life in Haast suiting that endeavour so has to balance his new life with the call of his old one. And tying it all together is an engaging mystery with plenty of red herrings, and interesting reveals which builds to a thrilling ending. All of which makes Softly Calls the Devil another great piece of New Zealand rural noir.

Softly Calls the Devil by Chris Blake

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8.0/10