Vanda Symon

New Zealand’s long standing Queen of Crime is, of course, Ngaio Marsh, but her trademark Inspector Alleyn novels were mostly set in England, apart from four where Alleyn is seconded to New Zealand. Vanda Symon, in contrast, sets her novels resolutely ‘at home’. I thoroughly enjoyed Prey (2024) which was set in Dunedin.

Here, Symon takes us the the capital city. We quickly learn that Max Grimes is a former Auckland police officer, now living rough, but with a day job as a cleaner. The circumstances surrounding his apparent downfall unfold as the story progresses. The titular Reaper has decided that his life mission is to rid the city streets of those he views as bottom feeders – the vagrants, the alcoholics, and vulnerable people who live in shop doorways and empty properties. People like Max, then? Well, perhaps not. Vanda Symon’s first task is to convince us that Max is tough and resilient enough – despite his reduced circumstances – to tackle a serial killer.

Homeless sleuths need some form of contact with and co-operation with the regular police, and for Max Grimes, this comes in the shape of DS Meredith Peters, an astute and resourceful officer, but one acutely aware of the residual misogyny not just in the police force, but in city politics.There is a parallel plot. Experienced readers know that these lines often converge, but for now, here it is: we learn that Max’s daughter was murdered by her drug-addled boyfriend, who subsequently took his own life. When Shane McFarlane, the boy’s father, approaches Max and asks him to trace the dealer whose product effectively killed both of their children, Max’s initial reaction is repulsion and a rude refusal. Later, he reconsiders, and agrees to help.

The Reaper is given sporadic third person narratives to himself, so we know exactly what he is up to, well before Max and the police do. He shoots dead a former chemistry teacher and successful crystal meth cook named Gary Cochrane, and it is Cochrane who pulls the two parallel plot lines together, much to the detriment of Max Grimes, who has had a bruising recent encounter with Cochrane in his search for the dealer who has caused him so much pain.

Vanda Symon cleverly emphasises Grimes’s physical vulnerability here, as she realises that a Reacher-like superhero is an unlikely fit for her man. I did wonder, however, about Max having a constantly charged and fully paid-up smartphone, despite his abject poverty, but hey ho, it’s crime fiction. When Max is framed for the shooting of Cochrane and arrested, at least he has a roof over his head but, mentally, he is in a very dark place.

The idea of a homeless solver of crimes is certainly not new. Trevor Wood introduced to his sleuth Jimmy Mullen in The Man on the Street, and followed up with One Way Street and Dead End Street. Is the concept plausible? Probably not, but then this particular reviewer must constantly remind himself that he is dealing with crime fiction. Readers want to be absorbed, intrigued and entertained; Vanda Symon emphatically ticks all three boxes. She has given us an ingenious plot which leads to a (literally) searing finale. Reaper is published by Orenda books and is available now.

I have to confess that I haven’t read a crime novel written by a New Zealand writer since, years ago, I blitzed the Inspector Alleyn stories by Ngaio Marsh. Although she was born and died in Christchurch, those stories are quintessentially English. Vanda Symon, by contrast, has written a successful series featuring Dunedin cop Sam Shephard, and Prey is the latest of these. Sam has returned from maternity leave, and almost immediately the state of open war between herself and boss, DI Greg Johns, resumes. He immediately gives her a cold case to work on. Twenty five years earlier, a priest at St Paul’s Cathedral, was found dead at the foot of some stone stairs. He had been stabbed, but also had a broken neck. Despite every best effort, no-one was ever arrested for the murder. And there is a problem. The Reverend Mark Freeman had a teenage daughter, Felicity. And now she is married to DI Johns.

As Sam struggles to adjust being back at work, and worries about ‘abandoning’ baby daughter Amelia (for those who like that sort of thing the author spares us no detail of the baby’s rather spectacular digestive system) she realises she has been handed a poison chalice. The crime scene has since been walked over by tens of thousands of pairs of feet, and there are a mere handful of people alive now who were connected to the case at the time. These are, in no particular order:
Yvonne Freeman, the murdered man’s widow. She has terminal cancer.
Felicity Johns, née Freeman, now married to DI Greg Johns.
DI Johns himself was on the investigating team as a young police constable.
Brendan Freeman, Felicity’s brother.
Mel Smythe, a young youth worker at the time of the killing. She has since become estranged from the church, and has fallen on hard times.
Aaron Cox, of Maori origin, and a former criminal. Mark Freeman had worked hard to put him on the straight and narrow path.

When Sam goes to interview Mel Smythe (for the second time) she finds her dead – stabbed with a kitchen knife, which makes the case very much a current murder investigation. But is it – and if so, how – connected to the death of Mark Freeman? It has to be said that in the first few pages of the book, a female witness watches, from behind a church pillar, a struggle between two people, one of whom is the Reverend Mark Freeman. Make of that what you will.

Sam Shephard is a very human creation with none of the foibles and weaknesses that many British writers love to give their police detectives. She is a proud mum and loyal partner to little Amelia’s father, fellow copper Paul Frost. She has a keen brain and a healthy sense of humour, and it is her intuition that allows her to finally realise she has been lied to, and thus crack the case open. This only happens, however, in the final pages of the novel, and not before we are led up many a garden path. The connections to the case of DI Johns and his wife only make more hot coals for Sam to walk over, and she faces an unenviable task of doing her job without becoming badly burned.

Vanda Symon creates a convincingly clammy picture of a wet and wintry Dunedin, and at the centre of it all, glowering over the wrongdoings of its congregation, is the menacing Victorian Gothic bulk of St Paul’s Cathedral. In addition to the gripping plot, Symon explores those eternal ingredients of all good crime novels – money, greed, shame, blackmail, hypocrisy and family secrets. Prey is published by Orenda Books and is available now.