BLUE HOTEL

In 1987, leather-clad tourist Blanca Nul goes missing in small-town New Zealand. Local reporter Ray Moody, washed-up and over-imbibing, gets a scoop the foreigner modelled for a pornographic magazine. He chases the story but crashes his car and loses his job.

A year to the day after she was reported missing, Blanca is mysteriously sighted a second time. Ray sees a chance to revisit the missing person story and revive his career. The doppelganger death is identified as local goth Amber Drake and labelled a suicide, but Ray is not convinced. He discovers Amber was a risk-taker with a darker purpose. She frequented the notorious S&M club Blue Hotel where the rich and powerful engaged their fantasies in anonymity.

As he searches for the real story Ray will learn how desperate, damaged and lonely people from all walks of life can be, and that the truth is hard-won and painful.

A gritty, gripping crime novel.

Chad Taylor lives in New Zealand, though he was based in Paris from 2008 to 2014. He has written six other novels – Pack of Lies, Heaven (made into a feature film by Miramax) Shirker, Electric, Departure Lounge and The Church of John Coltrane – as well as written for the screen. Chad has been previously published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage, Canongate/Text and in the US, France, Italy and Germany. In 2001 he was awarded a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for Literature, and in 2003 he was the Auckland University Literary Fellow.