American Blood

September 7, 2015
New Zealander Sanders (The Fallen) makes his U.S. debut with an underwhelming crime novel featuring a former NYPD detective living as Marshall Grade under Witness Protection in Albuquerque, N.Mex. Marshall once worked Brooklyn narcotics, until he got in too deep with a nasty crime boss—and his lethally attractive daughter—and blew his cover. Now Marshall glides by under the radar, leaving no paper trail. His WITSEC handler, the genial Texas-born marshal Lucas Cohen, doesn’t worry about his charge’s indiscretions, like subletting his home to stay off the books. But when Marshall antagonizes two known felons, Cyrus Bolt and Troy Rojas, he stirs up a hornet’s nest, all because a young woman, Alyce Ray, is missing, and she reminds him of someone he used to know. Readers will struggle to understand Marshall’s motives as he cuts a bloody swath across the city and the surrounding area in his pursuit of Bolt and Rojas and their gang of violent thugs. Sanders can write an action-packed scene, but his characters are thin.

Starred review from September 15, 2015
A fast-moving thriller that leaves a trail of blood and grit across the pages.Former NYPD cop Marshall Grade lives in Santa Fe these days, courtesy of a "blown tail job in Koreatown" and a federal witness protection program. The feds have set him up in a safe house he hardly uses, preferring to sublet the place to his friend Felix, a wanted felon. So Marshall is completely anonymous, without even a fake ID. Best, he believes, to leave no trace at all. But he still has a way of attracting attention to himself. He searches for a missing young woman named Alyce Ray, steals a Drug Enforcement Administration agent's car, and offers a kilo of fake meth samples to a couple of dealers before manhandling them. As he tells Felix, he has "aggravated some people best not aggravated." Meanwhile, hit man Wayne Banister, also known as the Dallas Man, is approached to take out a mob boss called the Patriarch, but he acknowledges "kind of a conflict of interest," since he works for said mob boss. Discussions go poorly, and blood flows. Colorful characters abound, and they're all dangerous: soldier-turned-drug trafficker Leon has lost track of $3 million, and he wants it back. "When there's dollars at stake you have to accept some amount of moral abandon," he tells a fellow criminal, reminding him, "there's a dead man in your truck, remember? All chopped up, Dahmer-style." These men pose a deadly threat to Marshall, but the danger is mutual. Great dialogue and a hero who won't stay hidden make this a winner for crime fans.

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Starred review from October 15, 2015
Readers know from the first page of this amazing novel that they're in for a hard-boiled feast. We watch the drunks and their shared pursuit of emptiness. Later, a pile of money gives off the scent of beckoning dreams. Part of the pleasure is sharing the author's glee in spinning these confections and in watching him create a labyrinthine plot that keeps readers glued to the page while they wonder what's going on. Marshall Grade is an ex-cop searching for a kidnapped girl. Just why is a mysterypeople keep asking him and get no answer until the end. His quest brings him up against a nasty crew of killers, and we watch as the author restages archetypal or even seemingly shopworn genre scenes but makes them fresh: hero unleashes judo on thugs threatening lone woman; cops and killers gather for a shootout at a motel; villains give philosophical speeches before plugging the hero; hero dogged by mysterious person known only as Patriarch, whose identity, when finally revealed, makes all the plot puzzles clear in an overpowering moment. A stunning achievement and a likely breakout book from a talented New Zealand author whose Auckland series has not received the attention it deserves in the U.S. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Prepare for a burst of interest in this outstanding novel when the Warner Brothers film starring Bradley Cooper hits the big screen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2015

Marshall Grade has skills of an assassin that attract attention, even when he's in the witness protection program. After working undercover for years for the NYPD, as a bent cop assisting a mob boss, his cover gets blown, the morality of what he's doing catches up with him, and he wants out. So he's sent to Santa Fe to lie low. But when Marshall starts looking for a missing girl, who evokes memories of his former life, old enemies come after him again. Life is cheap, death is always right around the corner, and today's good guy may be tomorrow's mortal enemy, as things close in on Marshall. VERDICT In his U.S. debut, New Zealander Sanders, author of three previous crime novels, displays expertise with dialog in a staccato style that often substitutes phrases for sentences. Tension builds as bodies pile up, although backstory insertions sometimes lessen the suspense. But what's missing here, compared to other gritty noir crime, is an emotional underpinning that makes the reader care about an outcome. This is a thrill ride that's short on heart. [See Prepub Alert, 6/1/15; library marketing.]--Michele Leber, Arlington, VA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2015

Marshall Grade, a former NYPD officer now living in the witness protection program in Santa Fe, NM, tries to make amends for wrongs committed during his final undercover assignment by searching for a local woman who has disappeared. That brings him to the attention of the bad guys he was trying to leave behind, including a contract killer called the Dallas Man. Nice that Sanders's first three books were New Zealand best sellers. Even nicer that film rights for his U.S. debut have been sold to Warner Bros., with Bradley Cooper attached to star.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015
From the opening lines of American Blood you know you’re in the hands of a master storyteller. New Zealand author Ben Sanders (‘The Auckland Trilogy’) throws the reader into the belly of the story, and you’re doing well if you can keep up with the rapid twists as the tale unfolds. After a botched assignment, ex-NYPD officer and undercover cop Marshall Grade is in hiding with the assistance of the witness protection program, but he’s soon in a whole new world of trouble when he starts looking for a missing woman. The shady characters Marshall encounters seem all too familiar as his past life comes back to show its hand. In keeping with the noir genre, the language is suitably slick, the dialogue is smart and the pace is cracking. This hardboiled novel is so filmic that it’s no surprise there is already a film in the works. With its impressive body count, American Blood is attracting comparisons with Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. It will appeal to fans of Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy and those who love their crime and thriller writing hardboiled. Deborah Crabtree is a Melbourne-based writer and bookseller