BLOOD MEN

Dad is a serial killer. Can his son avoid the same fate? That’s the question posed by New Zealander Cleave in his exceptionally gory fourth novel (Cemetery Lake, 2009, etc.).

When Edward Hunter was nine, he killed a neighbor’s dog, feeding it a steak embedded with nails. One thing led to another, and in short order his father Jack was charged with the murders of 11 prostitutes. After his life sentence, Edward’s mother committed suicide and his big sister overdosed on heroin. That was 20 years ago. Now Edward is an accountant, a model citizen devoted to wife Jodie and six-year-old daughter Sam. He and Jodie are at the bank when it’s held up by six armed robbers. This happens in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Christmas Week, the season of goodwill; if you missed the irony, don’t worry, you’ll get constant reminders. Edward confronts the robbers, verbally, and Jodie is shot dead. Edward emotes too much for the protagonist of an action story, but then an inner voice kicks in, the same voice he heard as a child dog-killer. He visits Jack in prison; father tells son that he heard the same voice each time he killed, that it wants blood, that they’re both “blood men.” Go ahead, says Jack; listen to the voice; avenge Jodie. To get him started, he gives his boy one of the robbers’ names. Edward goes to work, the cops always one step behind. He’ll cause several gruesome deaths, some in self-defense; his daughter Sam will be kidnapped; he’ll spring his old man, who’ll make up for lost time by resuming his own killing spree. Cleave’s assembly-line prose, with its American veneer, becomes numbing; characterization is minimal; there’s blood everywhere. The author has some tricks up his sleeve at the end, but they will antagonize the few readers left in his corner.

Neither Edward’s existential struggle nor the tracking of the robbers are suspenseful enough to keep our interest.