Add free shipping to your order with these great books
Blue Hotel - Chad Taylor

FREE SHIPPING

Paperback


RRP $32.99

$26.50

20%OFF

In Stock and Aims to ship next day
In 1987, leather-clad tourist Blanca Nul goes missing in New Zealand at the height of summer. Local reporter Ray Moody gets a scoop that the foreigner had modelled for a pornographic magazine called the Blue Hotel.

There is, however, a problem: since Eva, Ray’s young artist wife, left him after her discharge from psychiatric treatment, Ray’s bumped up his drinking – a lot. He meets his police contact Clark one evening but drives drunk and crashes. Community lawyer Scott Bayliss gets Ray off traffic charges and into rehab. Months later Ray finds work typing up adult classifieds for a sleazy tabloid. He’s then offered a cushy PR job for corporate raider Mark LeGrice but Ray refuses on journalistic principle.

A year to the day after she was reported missing, Blanca Nul 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 suicide, though Ray’s not convinced. He discovers she was a fearless risk-taker with a darker purpose. Amber frequented a sex club then graduated to another, the notorious Blue Hotel.

The Blue Hotel was once the place for the rich and famous to engage in B&D and S&M with impunity and guaranteed anonymity. It was also where Mark LeGrice’s missing son Kerrin once violently attacked a guest. LeGrice shut the place down, fast, but it seems more needs to be done when covering up murder.

Ray learns how desperate, damaged and lonely people from all walks of life can be, and he will be reminded that the truth is nearly always hard-won and painful. But is it something everyone needs to know about, if the only person you love still needs your protection?

About the Author

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. In 2001 he was awarded a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for Literature, and in 2003 he was the Auckland University Literary Fellow.
Industry Reviews
‘Blue Hotel’s wily, tangled narrative is pure enjoyment, and its tenderness for its damaged characters deeply affecting.’
Tim Rogers

“Whip-smart, relentless and lean, this perfectly executed noir has the wisecracks of Runyon, the twists of Wayne Macauley and the pitiless humanism of Temple. I doubt contemporary fiction has produced a more inventive, dogged and smashed-up investigator than Ray Moody —a man who can talk his way past any bouncer in the land, only to get beaten to a pulp once inside.”
Jock Serong

More in Classic Crime & Mystery Fiction

The Kellerby Code : 'Magnificent' Richard Osman - Jonny Sweet
Murder Most Royal - SJ Bennett

RRP $24.99

$23.75

The Other Husband : A gripping psychological thriller - Kathryn Croft
Dark Angel : The Letty Davenport series - John Sandford

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $22.99

$21.90

Murder in the Family - Cara Hunter

RRP $32.99

$30.25

Dead End : Detective Kelly Porter - Rachel Lynch

RRP $20.99

$19.95

All Good People Here - Ashley Flowers

RRP $32.99

$30.25

Cards on the Table : Poirot - Agatha Christie

RRP $19.99

$18.95

Sleeping Murder : Miss Marple - Agatha Christie

RRP $19.99

$18.95

I Am Already Dead - David Whish-Wilson

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Twelve Steps to a Long and Fulfilling Death - Sarah Smith
Blue Hotel - Chad Taylor

FREE SHIPPING

Paperback

RRP $32.99

$26.50

20%
OFF
Death in Summer : An unputdownable Scandi noir crime thriller - Lina Areklew
Vertigo - Karen Herbert

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$31.75

The Burden - Christie, A, writing as Mary Westmacott

Paperback

RRP $19.99

$18.95

A Daughter's A Daughter - Christie, A, writing as Mary Westmacott

RRP $19.99

$19.35

Yellowthread Street : Yellowthread Street : Book 1 - William Marshall

Popular Searches