The Sense of Place in Carved in Blood with Michael Bennett

Submitted: 23rd April 2025

The Sense of Place in Carved in Blood

Welcoming Michael Bennett to the BookTrail today!

Locations in Carved in Blood

Carved In Blood is the third novel in my Hana Westerman series, the first crime thriller books centred on a Māori cop, written by a Māori author.

In the newest book, we meet D.I. Jaye Hamilton, a senior cop in the New Zealand police force. He is buying a bottle of champagne for his daughter’s engagement party when a balaclava-clad gunman walks in the liquor shop. Jaye is shot at point blank range and left for dead. At first seen by the police as a botched hold-up, it becomes apparent that the shooting may be something even more sinister.

Locations in Carved in Blood

The books are set mostly in Auckland, the biggest city in New Zealand. It has a population a little larger than Birmingham.

I moved to Auckland 25 years ago to pursue a career in the big city. This was after growing up in small town New Zealand – the same life journey taken by my main character Hana Westerman. The first thing I always tell newcomers arriving in this city for the first time: Auckland is surrounded by over fifty volcanic peaks. It’s the second city on earth built on an active volcanic field. The other was Pompeii.

Map of Auckland volcanoes (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

One of the first places my girlfriend (an Aucklander) showed me when we moved here was a small hillock in a central city park that had been steadily growing for years. Volcanologists believe it could well be a new volcano forming. Tens of thousand of people live within a one mile radius. Despite things not panning out so well for the residents of Pompeii, no-one here seems particularly alarmed by this new volcano. It’s just life in Auckland.

The author at the summit of Maungawhau (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

For me, looking with the eyes of a non-Aucklander, the volcanic geography is an intense metaphor underpinning the sense of this place in all my books. This is an amazing city with beautiful harbours, inner city beaches, rooftop bars and amazing food. However, beneath the surface, there’s the constant movement of tectonic plates. Deep down somewhere below, ancient seismic currents bubble, readying to erupt. It’s an eerie and evocative landscape in which to set a crime thriller series…

Maungawhau carved terraces (c) Michael Bennett

At a certain point in Carved In Blood, the main character Hana runs to the top of a central city maunga (the te reo Māori word for ‘mountain’). Hana used to be married to Jaye, the cop who was shot in the botched hold-up. Hana is struggling to make sense of what really happened in that liquor store. The mountain she runs up to gather her thoughts is called Maungawhau (in English, Mt Eden).

Locations in Carved in Blood

Maungawhau is a volcano (of course!) It’s also a sacred mountain for the local iwi (Māori tribe), as are most maunga – Māori see mountains as living things, our ancestors. Centuries ago, Maungawhau was a fortified pā (fortress), with great defensive palisades built on terraces carved into the mountainside. Climbing the maunga, Hana Westerman is very aware that the organised crime groups suspected of being involved in the shooting have closed their ranks. They have raised their fortifications – resisting outside intrusion as effectively as the barricades did centuries before.

Auckland on foggy day (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

Visitors to Auckland today can climb Maungawhau – actually you have no choice but to climb, it’s blocked to cars. It’s approximately a 45 minute walk from most central city hotels, and it’s a lovely ascent, easily manageable by anyone with a moderate level of fitness. You can still see the carved terraces on Maungawhau, the remains of food pits dug in the hillside. And it’s one of the very best views of the city. Just remember you’re in a sacred place. It’s forbidden and deeply offensive to try to climb down into the crater, or to walk off the paths and down across the sacred sites.

Sentinel Beach landscape (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

The other thing a new arrival in Auckland quickly finds out; the weather is deeply unpredictable. It can change on a dime, and it does, continuously. Being a meteorologist in this country is a bit like being a water diviner – an act of faith rather than science. There’s a Crowded House song, Four Seasons In One Day. They’re an Auckland band, and that song is just an ordinary 24 hours in this city.

Carved In Blood is set in a particularly tempestuous Auckland winter. In the climax of the book, as the threads of Hana’s investigation into the attempted murder of her ex-husband finally come together, the police identify the likely suspect. But as armed cops descend to make an arrest, a cataclysmic weather event is about to descend on central Auckland…

There’s a reason for the unpredictability of the weather. New Zealand is a long skinny island system perched precariously between two massive bodies of water, the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Summers are usually magnificent; I’m an open water swimmer and we’ve had seven months so far this summer where I’ve been swimming in the ocean for an hour or more every day, without any fear of getting cold.

But winters can be hell. The Tasman and the Pacific both get tempestuous. It’s not uncommon for two intersecting weather systems to collide. If Auckland is ground zero, then it’s carnage. The harbour bridge closes, flights are grounded, storm pipes burst, streets flood, yachts break free of their moorings and get thrown up on rocks.

Locations in Carved in Blood

Visitors can experience the calm – and the madness – of Auckland weather anywhere, any time! But I adore walking at dawn along the downtown boardwalks as the sun rises over the city, or swimming as the sun goes down at a stunning inner-city beach like Sentinel Bay or Kohimarama.

The Matariki constellation (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

There’s another geographic feature that is central to the sense of place in Carved In Blood. Or more accurately, it’s a celestial feature. The liquor store hold-up and shooting takes place in the days leading up to the appearance in the New Zealand skies of the Matariki constellation. If you’ve seen the star emblem on the hood of a Subaru vehicle, you’ve seen the stars of Matariki (also known as Pleiades). This gently twinkling cluster of stars is sacred to Māori, as it is in Japanese culture, and for many indigenous peoples around the world.

Subaru logo (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

Māori came to New Zealand 1000 years ago, crossing the treacherous Pacific without maps or navigational tools, our ancestors using only their traditional knowledge of the skies. Many would say this knowledge was more reliable than any GPS system today. The stars of Matariki were like signposts in the heavens, which the navigators followed to guide their waka (canoes) to the new home. The constellation first rises in the depths of our winter, June or July, and Matariki is a very special time in New Zealand. It’s a national holiday, sometimes referred to as The Māori New Year.

Maori (c) Wikipedia

Locations in Carved in Blood

On the night Matariki rises, in the darkest hours before dawn, families and friends and neighbours all around the country gather. They gather at mountaintops, on coastal headlands, along beaches, anywhere where the delicate twinkle of the stars can be seen in the north-eastern horizon. Tears are shed for the recently deceased, who have now become the new stars in the skies. Karakia (prayers) are said, waiata (songs) are sung. Food is shared.

In Carved In Blood , for the main character Hana, the peace of Matariki is shattered by the shooting of her ex-husband. And as Matariki rises, and the violent winter storms batter Auckland city, Hana must find the stars she needs to guide her. She needs to unravel the shocking reason of exactly why Jaye was shot. And whose finger was on the trigger.

Auckland city wideshot (c) Michael Bennett

Locations in Carved in Blood

For visitors to New Zealand, Matariki rises on Friday June 20th, 2025, and Friday July 10th, 2026. Pre-dawn gatherings take place across the country. In Auckland, there are public talks where locals pass on their knowledge of the meaning of Matariki. In addition, there are other events where astronomical societies make available telescopes and binoculars to allow the best views of the sacred stars.

Dress warm, it’s winter! And bring a photo of those of your loved ones who have passed in the last year. This is to remember them, and to farewell them as they become the new stars.

Thank you Michael for such an epic trail!