Edward met and married Jodie and they have a young daughter Sam. Both Edward and Jodie are accountants making a reasonable living soon hoping to buy the house of their dreams. Shortly before Christmas, Jodie and Edward are in the bank waiting to talk to a loan officer about the financing of their new home. Suddenly six men enter the bank, armed and ready to pull off a robbery. For a short time everyone is dumbstruck. No one moves or talks.

To Edward it becomes obvious that the robbers are set to kill the teller whom they are confronting. Edward is no hero, but he senses that he should distract the robbers. He speaks and then realizes that by speaking he has set in motion a chain of events that will, most likely, destroy him.

Set in Christchurch, New Zealand Blood Men has a distinct international flavor. The New Zealand police have their own methods for dealing with crime and Santa gets a bit warm dealing with the summertime temperatures in the southern hemisphere. It seems odd to not have snow, sleds, and skis as a part of the Christmas landscape.

Blood Men has a distinctly dark tone which pervades the novel. Although Edward is determined to make a good life for himself, his wife, and his daughter, events seem to conspire to preclude this scenario. He wants to be a good man, but fears that he has too much of his father in him and to Edward his father is an evil man. The ray of hope is there but it keeps getting lost in a sea of clouds.

What really drives this novel is the characters. Edward may not be a replica of his father, but he has been influenced by his father’s actions, and, although as an adult he is on his way to making a better life for himself with the help and encouragement of his wife, he continues to see himself as a reflection of his father in times of stress. The thought processes of Edward’s father, Jack, give some insight into the mind of a killer. Jack justifies his actions in an interesting way, one that only a disturbed mind could see as rational.

While by no stretch of the imagination is Blood Men a “happy” novel it is an instructive look into the minds of several haunted men. It is not a book to read alone on a dark night. It does examine the problem of the nature versus nurture controversy though there is much to be left to the reader as to which is the more influential. There are graphic descriptions of the harm that some individuals do toward others including children so a word to the wise on this subject.

--Andy Plonka