Review | Blood Relations by Jonathan Moore (ARC)

A private detective stumbles upon the body of a woman, Claire Gravesend, who appears to have jumped to her death from an apartment building. He takes pictures of the corpse to sell to the press and becomes involved in something deeper. Hired by Claire’s mother to investigate her death, Leland Crowe finds himself tracing the path she made across country into a world of the elite. Where money isn’t an issue and immortality is within reach. When his office is trashed and his life in threatened, he realises that whatever Claire was searching for could be the key to everything.

It hadn’t occurred to me until just then that a person could be honest and immoral at the same time. Now I wasn’t so sure those attributes were mutually exclusive. And it wasn’t at all clear to me anymore which way the scale would swing if I put my character onto the balance.

Having read the author’s previous books, The Poison Artist and The Night Market I expected the usual brand of crime noir with a complicated protagonist and suggestions of dark technology. Blood Relations delivers on that front. The main character, Leland Crowe, is a disgraced former lawyer whose career and marriage imploded six years ago. Now, he works as a private investigator. We meet him as he is working a case for a defense attorney. He’s valuable because he’s willing to do the dirty work that other people won’t, and which could get him into trouble with the law. Taking pictures of a dead woman for money is unsavoury but he tells himself that it’s all about money.

The dead woman, Claire Gravesend, has had terrible scars on her back for as long as she could remember. She was on a mission to figure out where they come from when she died. Even though we never got to meet Claire, her shadow hangs over the story. During his investigation, Crowe meets a woman who looks exactly like Claire and that’s where things get complicated – and dangerous.

As in the author’s previous books, I felt immersed in the setting. There’s a gritty darkness where everything has its place, and every move has a purpose. There is plenty of action and while Crowe’s abilities to bounce back from his injuries may seem a little preposterous, I found myself rooting for him. Despite his moral greyness and questionable methods, he wants to do the right thing. There is a sideplot involving his ex-wife where there is a sense of unfinished history between them. This is where we see another side of the hard investigator and makes him more human.

Towards the end, the plot breaches into science fiction. Using human bodies and technology to prolong life is not a new subject, in fact the plot is reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. But instead of veering into melodrama, the noir elements remain intact and make the story feels grounded. The villains are believable and real enough to be terrifying. We don’t have to imagine the future to see how far some people would go to live forever. We can see them around us now.

Propulsive and compelling, Blood Relations is highly recommended. It’s out today!

I received an ARC from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.