Blood Relatives (film)

Blood Relatives (original French title: Les liens de sang) is a 1978 Canadian-French mystery film directed by Claude Chabrol from a screenplay that he and Sydney Banks adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name by Ed McBain. Set in Montreal, Canada, it involves the brutal murder of a teenage girl and the subsequent investigation led by Donald Sutherland as Steve Carella, the lead character of McBain's 87th Precinct series. Blood Relatives was filmed under a policy that allowed full tax deferment to foreign produced films if they reflected a specific portrait of Canada. For this reason, the novel's setting of a thinly-veiled New York City is changed to Montreal. Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (whose 1963 film High and Low was adapted from an Ed McBain novel) called Chabrol a "pretty skillful director" and this film "the best of all Ed McBain adaptations".