Blog Tour: Reaper – Vanda Symon

A killer is hunting Auckland’s homeless. No one cares. No one but Max. These are his people…

Max Grimes is homeless, living on the streets of Auckland – among the forgotten, the invisible. But now someone is hunting the homeless, killing them one by one. No one cares. Except Max.

Trying to put his shattered life back together, Max is pulled into a deadly game when a face from his past reappears, reopening wounds he thought were long buried. As whispers of a Grim Reaper spread terror through the city, Max must race against time – not only to find the killer, but to outrun the ghosts chasing him. Because if he fails, he’ll be next.

Vanda Symon is a crime writer from Dunedin, New Zealand, and the President of the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa.

The Sam Shephard series, which includes Overkill, The Ringmaster, Containment, Bound, Expectant and Prey, hit number one on the New Zealand bestseller list, and has also been shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award, as has her then standalone thriller, Faceless. Overkill was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Bound and Expectant have been nominated for USA Barry Awards. All six books have been digital bestsellers, and are in produc on for the screen.

Vanda lives in Dunedin.

My thoughts: the homeless community is vulnerable in so many ways, something this killer exploits. His methods are fiendish, if Max hadn’t asked his detective friend Meredith to dig a little deeper and order autopsies, the deaths would go unremarked, just more statistics.

Max has also been approached by perhaps the last person on earth he would want to help. But he doesn’t want to be distracted, someone has to stop the killer from taking the lives of any more homeless people – people he counts as friends, people who deserve better than being moved along and forgotten.

But Max is now on the killer’s radar and his life is in serious danger, and while his past has left him with some skills, his present situation makes him as vulnerable as any of the other victims.

Totally gripping, intelligent crime writing, with a protagonist who might have stopped being a detective, but still wants to help people.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.