Published 12th March 2026 by Orenda Books.
From the cover of the book:
The City looks away … but someone is watching…
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.
***********
Former police officer Max Grimes is living on the streets of Auckland, one of the invisible homeless people no one seems to care about. But the homeless are suddenly the focus of public attention - for all the wrong reasons. Someone is hunting the homeless from the shadows, murdering them one-by-one for reasons unknown.
Dubbed the Grim Reaper, the killer has Max and his fellow 'invisibles' running scared, with nowhere to hide. Can Max find the Reaper before the ghosts of his own past claim him?
The story unfurls from the perspectives of Max, his former colleague DS Meredith Peters of the Auckland police force, and the unnamed Reaper. Moving back and forth between their separate narratives, the three voices allow Symon to explore different aspects of the story - Max, as potential prey, desperately trying to discover who is killing his friends in Auckland's gritty under-belly; Meredith, battling to stay in-charge of a high-profile case mired in politics; and the Reaper, an increasingly unhinged killer getting into his murderous stride.
Max's own part in the story is complicated when the past that haunts him intrudes as he is trying to get his life back on track, in the form of Shane McFarlane, the man whose son killed Max's daughter. McFarlane asks Max to help him find the drug dealers who sent his son off the rails, and despite Max's reservations he agrees - only to find himself part of the murder investigation.
I did find myself at a bit of a disadvantage in not having read the first book in this new series, Faceless, as so much of this story relates to Max's traumatic past, but having loved Symon's Sam Shephard books I knew she would not steer me wrong... and I was right. The crime elements are carefully wrought to immerse you in a gripping stand-alone case, as Max and Meredith attempt to discover the identity of the Reaper - someone who is warming to his task, while pursuing a vendetta against Max. Lashings of layered mystery around the Reaper's intentions keeps you on your toes, and the McFarlane sub-plot blends seamlessly into the central plot to ramp the suspense factor up to the max.
Weaving through the story Symon employs really interesting themes, largely around the plight of the 'invisible' homeless people she gives a voice to in this new series. By examining ways in which ordinary people fall through the cracks when their lives become overwhelmed with challenges, and highlighting how society prefers to ignore them when they do, the story gets a powerful thought-provoking kick.
This is a different side to New Zealand noir than I am used to, but it absolutely fulfils the brief of page-turner with a social conscience. Tense, atmospheric, and psychologically fascinating, this is thriller writing with heart and soul.
Reaper is available to buy now n paperback, ebook and audio formats. You can support indie publishing by buying direct from Orenda Books HERE.
Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Vanda Symon lives in Dunedin, New Zealand. As well as being a crime writer, she has a PhD in science communication and is a researcher at the Centre for Pacific Health at the University of Otago.
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