From international bestselling author Paul Cleave comes a gripping thriller about a dedicated family man, who may or may not have inherited his serial killer father’s penchant for violence. WINNER OF NEW ZEALAND’S PRESTIGIOUS NGAIO MARSH AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL OF 2011 Edward Hunter has it all—a beautiful wife and daughter, a great job, a bright future . . . and a very dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer was caught, convicted, and locked away in New Zealand’s most hellish penitentiary. That man was Edward’s father. Edward has struggled his entire life to put the nightmares of his childhood behind him. But a week before Christmas, violence once again makes an unwelcome appearance in his world. Is Edward destined to be just like his father, to become a man of blood? A true master of the genre, Paul Cleave unveils a brutally vivid picture of a killer’s mind and a city of fallen angels captured at the ends of the earth. “Riveting and all too realistic." -- Tess Gerritsen “Relentlessly gripping, deliciously twisted and shot through with a vein of humor that’s as dark as hell. Cleave creates fictional monsters as chilling and as charming as any I’ve ever come across. Anyone who likes their crime fiction on the black and bloody side should move Paul Cleave straight to the top of their must-read list.” -- Mark Billingham, award-winning author of Blood Line “Compelling, dark, and perfectly paced, New Zealand writer Cleave’s psychological thriller explores the evil lurking in us all, working relentless magic until the very last page. There’s nary a misstep in this riveting thriller about the bad deeds even good men sometimes do.” ― Booklist “Dark, bloody, and gripping, Blood Men is classic noir fiction. In Paul Cleave, Jim Thompson has another worthy heir to his throne.” -- John Connolly, New York Times bestselling author of The Whisperers "Cleave [has an] impressive talent for character traits, building tension, and his edgy presentation of Christchurch — a town which, thanks to his previous novels, is now a solid addition to the geography of noir cities." ― Bookgasm.com “Paul Cleave writes like the fine-tuned punches of a middleweight boxer—with short sharp jabs to the solar plexus that make you gasp.” ― Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Australia) “Cleave displays a certain adroitness in insistently plucking the imagination with icy fingers of fear.” ― Christchurch Press (New Zealand) Paul Cleave is an award-winning author who often divides his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, and Europe. He’s won the New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Award three times, the Saint-Maur book festival’s crime novel of the year award in France, and has been shortlisted for the Edgar and the Barry in the US and the Ned Kelly in Australia. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. The critically acclaimed The Quiet People was published in 2021, with The Pain Tourist (2022) and His Favourite Graves following in 2023. Blood Men chapter one The alarm clock dragging me into the Friday morning before the Christmas break sounds like laser fire from an old sci-fi movie, the kind where the special effects budget runs the production company up about a hundred bucks. I manage to open my eyes about halfway. I feel like I have a hangover even though I haven’t had a drink in ages. I reach out and shut off the alarm and am almost asleep when Jodie pushes me in the back. Hopefully this year Santa will bring me an alarm clock that doesn’t make any noise. “You have to get up,” she says. It takes a few seconds to focus on her words, and I let them slide with me toward the dark hole of sleep. “I don’t want to,” I hear myself saying. “You have to. It’s your job to get up and then drag me out of bed.” “I thought it was your turn to drag me out.” I roll over to face her. The sun is bright behind the curtains, beams of light shining onto the ceiling. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see them. I squeeze them tight and pretend it’s nighttime all over again. “Five more minutes. I promise.” “That’s what you said five minutes ago when you turned it off the first time.” “There was a first time?” “Come on. It’s Friday. We’ve got the whole weekend ahead of us.” “It’s Christmas,” I say. “We’ve got two weeks ahead of us.” “But not yet,” she reminds me, and she pushes me again. I sit on the edge of the bed and yawn for ten seconds before grabbing her hands and trying to drag her out as well, not wanting to go through this nightmare of waking up alone. She hides under the sheets and starts laughing. Sam comes into the room and starts laughing too. “Mummy’s a ghost,” she says, and jumps on top of her. From beneath the sheet comes an “oomph,” then more laughing. I leave them to it and go and take a shower, the hot water bringing me fully around. I’m finished and halfway through shaving when Jodie comes in and climbs into the shower behind me. “Just four more days of work,” she sa