Blue Hotel

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.