Traditional detective fiction frequently constructs crime as a disruption of social order resolved through detection and the restoration of “normality and the rule of law” (Messent, 2013, p. 20). Indigenous criminology, however, critiques criminological frameworks that “rely on assumptions about offending” (Cunneen & Tauri, 2016, p. 1).  and “pathologise Indigenous peoples and problematise their cultural beliefs and practices” (ibid). Drawing on Indigenous criminology and Pasifika (Pacific) relational epistemologies, examined is how New Zealand Māori and Pasifika narratives represent gendered violence through communal and relational structures of harm rather than isolated acts of deviance.

Through the novels Better the Blood by New Zealand-Māori writer Michael Bennett, featuring Māori detective Hana Westerman; Blood Jungle Ballet by American writer John Enright, centred on Samoan detective Apelu Soifua; and They Who Do Not Grieve by Samoan writer Sia Figiel, explored are tensions between Pasifika social worlds and Western constructions of crime, justice, gender, and social order. 

Enright incorporates Samoan communal structures, fa‘afafine (transvestite and transgender) identities, and village justice systems into a Western police procedural framework, while Bennett hybridises conventional crime fiction with Māori relational and Indigenous criminological frameworks shaped by whakapapa (genealogy), trauma, and accountability. Although not crime fiction, Figiel’s coming-of-age narrative reveals shame, communal silencing, embodied grief, and inherited trauma underpinning wider structures of violence and social harm within Pacific crime narratives. Proposed is that Pasifika narratives challenge Western understandings of gender, criminality, and justice by exposing violence emerging through patriarchy, trauma, colonialism, and regulation rather than solely through individual criminal pathology.

References: 

Cunneen, C., & Tauri, J. (2016). Indigenous criminology. Policy Press.

Enright, J. (2017). Blood Jungle Ballet. Open Road Media.

Figiel, S. (1999). They who do not grieve. Vintage.

Messent, P. (2013). The crime fiction handbook. Wiley-Blackwell.

Bennett, M. (2022). Better the blood. Simon & Schuster.