Review: EXPECTANT, Vanda Symon

• 
  This edition read as an e-book on my Kindle (Amazon) 
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BKPJRDV2
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orenda Books, Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 16, 2023
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1914585586
• Book 5 of 6 ‏ : ‎ Sam Shephard

Synopsis (Amazon) 

A killer targeting pregnant women.

A detective expecting her first baby…

The shocking murder of a heavily pregnant woman throws the New Zealand city of Dunedin into a tailspin, and the devastating crime feels uncomfortably close to home for Detective Sam Shephard as she counts down the days to her own maternity leave.

Confined to a desk job in the department, Sam must find the missing link between this brutal crime and a string of cases involving mothers and children in the past. As the pieces start to come together and the realisation dawns that the killer's actions are escalating, drastic measures must be taken to prevent more tragedy.

For Sam, the case becomes personal, when it becomes increasingly clear that no one is safe, and the clock is ticking…

My Take:

Highly recommended.  I love the feistiness of Sam Shephard and the intution that she brings to solving cases. 

I realised when I recently read Vanda Symon's latest,  PREY, that I had missed a story in the series. EXPECTANT feels a very personal book, and the Author's Note at the end goes a long way to explaining why that emotion comes through. I think in many ways this is a "woman's" book.

I thought too that I hadn't noticed before how "Kiwi" some of Symon's language is, particularly dialogue.

Most enjoyable. 

My rating: 4.7 

I've also read

• OVERKILL - #1
• THE RINGMASTER -#2
• CONTAINMENT - #3
• 4.8, BOUND - #4
• 4.5, PREY -#6

Review: PREY, Vanda Symon

• 
   this edition a library book from my local library
  
• large print from Aurora Large Print published 2024
• ISBN 9-781399-171014
• 329 pages 
• #6 in the Sam Shephard series 

• ***SHORTLISTED for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger***

  ***SHORTLISTED for Best Paperback in the Barry Awards***

  **SHORTLISTED for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel** 

Synopsis (publisher)

On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.

The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it’s personal.

With all the witness testimony painting a picture of a dedicated church and family man, what possible motive could there have been for his murder?

But when Sam starts digging deeper into the case, it becomes apparent someone wants the sins of the past to remain hidden. And when a new potential witness to the crime is found brutally murdered, there is pressure from all quarters to solve the case before anyone else falls prey.

But is it already too late…? 

My Take

When she returns to work after 6 months maternity leave, Sam's boss makes sure she feels that she is an imposition by giving her a cold case to work on. 25 years ago his wife's father died on the steps of his church in Dunedin. 

I thoroughly enjoyed getting re-acquainted with Sam Shephard. She is feisty and strong as well as intuitive. 

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

• OVERKILL
• THE RINGMASTER
• CONTAINMENT
•  4.8, BOUND 

Review: BOUND, Vanda Symon

Publisher: Penguin Books 2011
ISBN 978-0-14-356527-7
314 pages
Source: I bought it. (from Wheeler Books)

Publisher's blurb
A brutal home invasion shocks the nation. A man is murdered, his wife bound, gagged and left to watch. But when Detective Sam Shephard scratches the surface, the victim, a successful businessman, is not all he seems to be.

My take:
This is #4 in the Sam Shephard series.
The story opens with a prologue, a woman bound to a chair, looking at the body of her husband, the top of his head blown off, waiting for her teenage son to arrive home.

The investigation of this horrific murder falls to D.I. Johns and his team. Sam Shephard, recently promoted to Detective, is the liaison with the wife and son of the victim.
The local newspaper instantly puts pressure on the police task force to find the perpetrators of this "Killer Home Invasion."  The description the victim's wife gives seems to tally with the idea of some sort of revenge killing, but what had John Henderson been involved in to become this sort of target?

The plot of BOUND seems to change tack at least twice. The original murder is followed by two more deaths, one of which is a murder. There is a range of candidates for the second murder, and just when the first appears to be solved, Sam throws a spanner in the works.

While I'm sure the author Vanda Symon has tried to make it possible for a new reader to meet Sam Shephard for the first time in BOUND, I find it hard to assess whether that would be realistic, as I've read them all. Elements of Sam's backstory flooded back to me as I read BOUND.
Be that as it may, if BOUND is your first Sam Shephard novel, I'm sure you will be looking for the earlier novels.

• OVERKILL
• THE RINGMASTER
• CONTAINMENT

What BOUND does demonstrate is that Vanda Symon is a force to be reckoned with in Australasian, if not world, crime fiction. She is a skilled story teller, has managed the art of developing threads, at the same time as weaving peronal elements from Sam's life into the novel. And at the end, we are assured there will be another in this series - Sam has unfinished business.

My rating: 4.8

Vanda Symon's website
BOUND No. 1 Bestseller!
Of News and Reviews

CONTAINMENT was shortlisted for the inaugural Ngaio Marsh crime fiction award in 2010.
I'm adding BOUND to my list for the Australasian novels in 2011 Global Reading Challenge

Review: CONTAINMENT, Vanda Symon

Penguin Books, 2009
ISBN 978-0-14-320229-5
311 pages
#3 in the Sam Shepherd series

When the container ship the Lauretia Express runs aground near Dunedin and spills containers across the Aramoana sands the city's normally staid and law abiding denizens turn out in force to apply their own rules of salvage. Detective Constable Sam Shepherd can't believe the pillage she is witnessing. Nor does she expect to be walloped when she intervenes in a squabble between two looters. To complicate things Sam's assailant very nearly dies in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and Sam saves his life.

One of the containers held a well documented antique collection, now widely dispersed, which the owner is anxious to recover. The discovery a week or so later of a body in the sea off Aramoana,  with all the signs of foul play, adds another complicating element.
And if work is not complicated enough, Sam's personal life hypes up a notch when her boyfriend announces he has applied to come to work in Dunedin, and she's not at all sure she wants him that close.

CONTAINMENT is #3 in Vanda Symon's Sam Shepherd series. I thought there were elements of humour in this one that I had not noticed in the earlier novels, OVERKILL and THE RINGMASTER. Sam Shepherd is a likeable, feisty character who doesn't always make the wisest decisions. She is constantly in trouble with her section boss D.I.Johns but then she often causes headaches for him.
I must admit there were times when I wondered if a detective constable would really behave that way, would really  take that action on herself, but those slight stretches of credibility aside, CONTAINMENT is a well plotted page turner. I like the way the character of Sam Shepherd is developing and I think New Zealander Vanda Symon is an author well worth keeping an eye on. According to a promo in the back of CONTAINMENT we can expect a fourth title in the series.

My rating: 4.7

Vanda Symon's website
Kiwi Craig interviews Vanda Symon
Craig talks about CONTAINMENT

My reviews of earlier titles:
OVERKILL
THE RINGMASTER

Crime Fiction Alphabet - O is for Overkill

I thought for my Crime Fiction Alphabet post this week that I would re-run a review I wrote in 2008 of OVERKILL by New Zealand writer Vanda Symon. If Vanda isn't on your bookshop list, she should be.



Penguin Books New Zealand, 2007, 331 pages, ISBN 978-0-14-300665-7

Unsuspecting, Gabriella Knowes invited death into her house. The reader knows that from the first paragraph of the prologue in Vanda Symon's debut novel. What we learn too in the first few pages is that this is a targeted kill.

To the lone young police constable in Mataura, Sam Shepherd, it first of all looks as if Gabriella may have committed suicide. But Sam is no fool, and she realises that there are things that just don't fit that scenario. But who would want to kill Gabriella, a young housewife, and why?

The investigation quickly passess out of Sam's hands. Within hours, the Mataura Elderly Citizens Centre becomes the centre of operations, a collection of CIB detectives from as far afield as Invercargill and Dunedin are called in, and a forensics team has been flown in from Dunedin. And then the investigators learn that Sam once had a live-in relationship with Gaby's husband. Sam is suspended.

It is rare that a book captures me for a whole afternoon, or that I read it in one sitting as I did this one. OVERKILL is a wonderful page-turner. Sam Shepherd is a gritty character, persistent, intuitive, a lateral thinker, a police constable who has always wanted to be a detective. Despite her suspension from duty she can't leave things alone and it is her persistence that finally solves the why and the who. In OVERKILL Vanda Symon has given Sam a sounding board in Maggie her flatmate. I liked her so much that I hope we see her in another novel.

The setting for OVERKILL, the southern part of the South Island of New Zealand is important for two reasons. The first is that it explains Sam's position as lone constable in charge of a small town police station. The second relates more closely to explaining why some one decides to "deal with" Gabriella Knowes. It is a setting that feels very authentic to me.

Well, I bought a copy of the next book, THE RINGMASTER, when I bought OVERKILL. There's an extract from RINGMASTER at the end of OVERKILL. It is also a Sam Shepherd title.
Since writing the review of OVERKILL I've also reviewed THE RINGMASTER and I really must read CONTAINMENT which was recently number 4 in the New Zealand Fiction for Adults Best Seller List.

My rating: 4.8

From Vanda's blog:
When I'm not writing Crime novels I'm busy being a Domestic Goddess and queen of my household in Dunedin. The first in my Sam Shephard detective series, Overkill, was published by Penguin New Zealand in 2007. The Ringmaster was released in August 2008. The German translation of Overkill, Ein Harmloser Mord was published by Blanvalet in October.

Explore Vanda's blog and her website for yourself..

Review: THE RINGMASTER, Vanda Symon

Penguin New Zealand, 2008, ISBN 978-0-14-300834-7, 308 pages

Sam Shepherd, the central character of Symon's first novel OVERKILL has moved to Dunedin, and from being in charge of a local police station to the bottom rung of detective training. She has just completed a six month trial period, and is now a detective constable. A blot on her immediate landscape though is that her boss in the current murder investigation is her old boss DI Greg Johns and neither of them trust nor like each other.

The current investigation is the murder of a young female post graduate university student, found battered and drowned in the local river. Sam chafes against the lowly jobs that Johns gives her and initiates a case breakthrough when she realises there are connections between this murder and earlier unsolved murders.

Sam's friend Maggie whom we also first met in OVERKILL has also come to Dunedin, and provides the role of support and confidante to Sam. I like the development of both their characters. I'm not sure that the final resolution of the murder that Symon comes up with isn't just a little too far fetched for my liking.

However I do think Vanda Symon is a writer to watch. There is a third novel on the way: CONTAINMENT - you'll find a short extract in the back pages of THE RINGMASTER. So here are a couple of novels to look out for: OVERKILL (2007) and THE RINGMASTER (2008). Do yourself a favour and read them in order.

my rating: 4.4

From Vanda's blog:
When I'm not writing Crime novels I'm busy being a Domestic Goddess and queen of my household in Dunedin. The first in my Sam Shephard detective series, Overkill, was published by Penguin New Zealand in 2007. The Ringmaster was released in August 2008. The German translation of Overkill, Ein Harmloser Mord was published by Blanvalet in October.

Explore Vanda's blog and her website for yourself.