Simon & Schuster UK bags two more books from Māori author Michael Bennett

Simon & Schuster UK has announced the acquisition of one further book in award-winning Māori author Michael Bennett’s detective Hana Westerman series and another standalone thriller.

Katherine Armstrong, deputy publishing director for crime and thriller fiction, bought world all-language rights to New Zealand-based Bennett’s next two books from his agent Craig Sisterson. 

The first in the Māori detective Westerman series, Better the Blood, was published in 2022, and was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and was also shortlisted for the Audio Book of the Year at the Capital Crime Fingerprint Awards. 

The second book in the Westerman series, Return to Blood, was published on 25th April. The new deal includes the third book, Etched in Blood, which is scheduled for publication in spring 2026, with American rights having already been sold to Grove Atlantic.

Simon & Schuster UK’s second acquisition, a standalone thriller, is described as “a crime thriller with elements of 

time travel and the metaphysical world brushing up against the physical world” set in Sydney, Australia.

Michael Bennett said: “I am delighted to be continuing working with Simon & Schuster and with my brilliant editor Katherine Armstrong on these two new books. Coming back to my lead character, Māori ex-detective Hana Westerman, is like coming back to family for me – quite literally. Hana is based on so many strong amazing women in my life: my mum, my partner Jane, my aunties, my sisters.” 

He added: “Hana’s daughter Addison is strongly inspired by my own daughter Matariki, and in the second book Return To Blood, we meet Hana’s dad Eru for the first time, who is based on my own dad Ted (or Eru, in te reo Māori). The irony is that as a crime writer my job is to lovingly craft these characters who I love like family, then drag them all through hell and back. Sorry, fam!”

Bennett revealed that in the third Westerman story the detective “is confronted by a crime that cuts very close to home for her and her family – with an ending that might just turn everything upside down for readers.”

Armstrong said: “I am absolutely delighted to be continuing to work with Michael on the fantastic Hana Westerman series. Michael is a brilliant writer and Hana is such a wonderfully drawn and conflicted character that we have got to know through two books so far. She’s a great detective, but she’s also a woman who has had to work within a system that has not always treated her people kindly. At the heart of everything she does there is that conflict between culture and duty. I can’t wait to see where Michael takes her next, and to see what he does with his standalone thriller. Readers are in for a real treat!”

Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) lives in Auckland, New Zealand, but describes Sydney, where his new standalone thriller is set, as his “second city”. His first book, a non-fiction novel telling the true story of New Zealand’s worst miscarriage of justice, In Dark Places, won Best Non-Fiction Book at the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards. His second book, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas is a time-travel graphic novel co-authored with Ant Sang.