Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
In 1987, leather-clad tourist Blanca Nul goes missing in small-town New Zealand. Local reporter Ray Moody, washed-up and over-imbibing, gets a scoop the foreigner modelled for a pornographic magazine. He chases the story but crashes his car and loses his job.
A year to the day after she was reported missing, Blanca is mysteriously sighted a second time. Ray sees a chance to revisit the missing person story and revive his career. The doppelganger death is identified as local goth Amber Drake and labelled a suicide, but Ray is not convinced. He discovers Amber was a risk-taker with a darker purpose. She frequented the notorious S&M club Blue Hotel where the rich and powerful engaged their fantasies in anonymity.
As he searches for the real story Ray will learn how desperate, damaged and lonely people from all walks of life can be, and that the truth is hard-won and painful.
It’s been thirteen years since readers have got to savour a brand-new book from New Zealand author Chad Taylor, whose early 2000s novels like SHIRKER and ELECTRIC earned him a deserved reputation Down Under and in Europe as a modern master of neo-noir.
Taylor’s long-awaited return, BLUE HOTEL, shows he can still be one of the most exciting voices in antipodean literature. It’s a dark and funny tale set among the excesses and economic crashes of the late 1980s while veering across diverse locations in greater Auckland.
Ray Moody is a booze-soaked reporter who sniffs a hidden story when leather-clad Danish woman Blanca Nul creates a scene then vanishes from a pub about an hour’s drive north of the big smoke. Ray’s chase ends in catastrophe; he’s left nursing injuries and cataloguing adult classifieds for a dingy tabloid. The only media that’ll have him. He spies a second chance when another woman dressed like a Danish doppelganger vanishes on the anniversary, kickstarting a dangerous search that takes Ray from tucked-away BDSM dungeons to lofty offices of corporate raiders.
Will chasing the story lead to redemption or ruin?
Full of striking characters, sparkling writing, and a rich sense of time and place, BLUE HOTEL is a ripper of a read. I tore through it quickly, even as I found myself admiring and appreciating Taylor's prose along with his storytelling. While Taylor may have been in hiatus, he hasn’t lost a step.
Highly recommended.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, author of Macavity Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, series editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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