In 2018 a novel barnstormed its way into the Ngaio Marsh Awards with THE SOUND OF HER VOICE making it to double finalist in both the Best First and Best Novel categories. At the time I remember thinking this is an author with such potential, and knowing it was a pseudonym, stood by patiently waiting to see if the author would be able to emerge, or would continue to write under that name. Chris Blake is that author, and his second novel, SOFTLY CALLS THE DEVIL is as good as that debut, continuing on with the intense, unsparing, and oh so realistic stylings of the first offering.
Following on with Matt Buchanan's career and personal story, for some context, from my review of the first book:
Every year the Ngaio Marsh awards for New Zealand crime fiction throw up an unexpected perspective, something brave and unusual that will set you back on your heels and make you think. For this reviewer, this year, that book was THE SOUND OF HER VOICE. In what's a combination of police procedural, and tragic police perspective, Detective Matt Buchanan has been in the job too long, and he's had a gut full of the nastiness of human nature. Unsolved murder cases haunt him, people being bastards haunt him, everything haunts him. He's bitter and he's well on the way to being twisted, and the murder of 14 year old Samantha Coates puts him on the trail of something big, and even nastier than he had even thought possible.
This second outing for Buchanan sees him back in uniform, in a small town, doing typical small town policing. And he's more settled, seemingly happier in himself, and what might seem like a demotion to some, is a chance to regroup, and rethink life and career, although the quieter world of traffic offences, kids behaving badly and the odd drug dealer, suddenly gets blown apart when his much admired predecessor in the job, Gus, is discovered beside a river with a bullet in his head. Gus had been doing a bit of digging around in an old murder-suicide in the local area, the parent's bodies discovered but their daughter never found. For all the world it looked like a violent and controlling father had inevitably flipped, and the missing daughter had always been assumed dead, as there had never been a trace of her. Matt's detective spider senses are tweaked though, and as much as he doesn't want to think it, it seems that there's been some rifts in this seemingly close-knit community, until more murders push him firmly back into his old detecting ways.
Refreshingly this novel doesn't make out that all the higher-ups and/or colleagues are idiots, and Buchanan isn't set up to be a lone wolf that saves the day. Rather the effects of his own trauma, and loss, are incorporated into the story of a decent bloke, trying to do the right thing, by a community of people he feels responsible for. He's also able to make some forward movement in his personal life, which very nearly doesn't work out, something that was surprisingly moving.
SOFTLY CALLS THE DEVIL is one of those crime novels that, on the face of it, is a standard police procedural, written by somebody who knows that world back to front (Blake runs the Behavioural Science unit of the NZ Police in Wellington). He's also incredibly skilled at making it all about the story, not the process, and at no stage does this read like a training manual, or a self-help treatise.
Instead, this is a fast paced, nicely twisty mystery with a particularly nasty killer at the centre of it - killing to protect themselves from their past, as is so often the way. There is also something very real about the way this story addresses the complications and trauma of an ongoing policing career, and how the connections with other serving officers who understand, and a community that supports and sympathises can be the difference between burn out and thriving.
Told in a brisk, no nonsense tone that is richly interlaced with laconic humour, and compelling observation, SOFTLY CALLS THE DEVIL delivers and then some on the promise of THE SOUND OF HER VOICE. Bring on the third novel please.
Softly Calls the Devil
From NZ cop-turned-novelist Chris Blake comes a dark, gripping, intricate crime thriller set on the South Island's wild and remote west coast.
Things are going well for Matt Buchanan. After some hard times, life is peaceful as sole-charge constable for the small, isolated settlement of Haast on New Zealand's wild West Coast. He's made friends among the locals, won their trust. He keeps their little world safe. And he's working in spectacular surroundings - the fierce Tasman Sea, the dense beech forest, the dark, cold swamps, the snowy Southern Alps.
But then his much-loved predecessor, Gus, is discovered beside a river with a bullet through his head. He'd been looking into a disturbing murder-suicide from 1978: the parents' bodies were found, but not their daughter's. Suspecting a darker truth, Matt is certain the answers can't be too far away in this close-knit community. How does former forest service ranger Liam, with his gang links, fit into the story? What about Joe, the alcoholic hermit whose knowledge and intelligence seem so at odds with his appearance and lifestyle?
Tensions rise, there are more deaths, people are threatened, memories surface of a cult that went horribly wrong ... Even when support arrives, Matt finds himself pursuing a case that's well outside his remit and is taking him to places he'd sooner not revisit. Also part of an increasingly terrifying situation are an over-curious journalist and a woman who could be someone special.
Matt has managed to shun his own demons, and is desperate not to face them again, but when confronted by the devil himself, he must take action, rediscover something of the person he was - for his own sake and to save those he loves.
This is the work of an award-winning master storyteller. Fast-moving, spare, compelling and rich in laconic humour, Softly Calls the Devil will grab you from the first page and refuse to let go.
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