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The Long Way Down
The fall was an accident. Everything before it was murder. And the dead won't let her forget.
Table of Contents
About The Book
For readers of Jane Harper and Dervla McTiernan, with the psychological unease of Nicci French and a whisper of John Connolly’s supernatural dread, comes the first standalone from the multi-award-winning author of the Hana Westerman series.
Chloe is about to have the worst day of her life.
A rookie cop in Sydney, she responds to a call-out on a housing estate: reports of a gunman, a building in lockdown, backup still minutes away. Going in alone, Chloe is pulled upwards – floor by floor – until she reaches the roof.
There, a split-second decision ends in death.
Afterwards, Chloe starts to unravel. She can’t sleep. Can’t trust what she saw. Can’t stop reliving the moment: the same rooftop, the same man, the same fatal fall. PTSD, her superiors say. Trauma. Guilt.
But fellow cop Kingston, Chloe’s Māori boyfriend, believes something else is at work. That the dead don’t always rest. That something – or someone – is pushing her back to that day for a reason.
As Chloe digs into the victim, a drug dealer with enemies on both sides of the law, the official story begins to fracture. The fall from the roof may have been a tragic accident – but the chain of events that put him there was anything but. And the more Chloe uncovers, the more dangerous the truth becomes.
To expose it, she’ll have to risk her career, her sanity, and the life she’s barely holding together.
Because the worst day of her life may not be over yet.
About The Author
(C)
Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning screenwriter, director and author. His first book, a non-fiction work 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. Michael's second book, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas, is a time-travel graphic novel co-authored with Ant Sang.
Better the Blood, the first Hana Westerman thriller, was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction/Ockham New Zealand Book Award, as well as for the Audio Book of the Year at the Capital Crime Fingerprint Awards and Best First Mystery Novel at the Barry Awards. It was also longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Debut Dagger and was a finalist for Best Novel at the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards, where it won the award for Best First Novel. Return to Blood, the second novel in the acclaimed series, won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel in 2025.
Michael's short and feature films have won awards internationally and have screened at numerous festivals, including Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Locarno, New York, London and Melbourne. Michael is the 2020 recipient of the Te Aupounamu Māori Screen Excellence Award, in recognition of members of the Māori filmmaking community who have made high-level contributions to screen storytelling.
He lives in Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand), with his partner Jane, and children Tīhema, Māhina and Matariki.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (April 8, 2027)
- Length: 368 pages
- ISBN13: 9781398536876
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