Overkill

By Vanda Symon

When the body of a young mother is found on the banks of New Zealand’s Mataura River, young female police constable Sam Shephard begins an investigation, with horrifying and very personal implications. Book one in an addictive, atmospheric new series.

*** SHORTLISTED for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2019***
***SHORTLISTED for the Ngaio Marsh Award***

’The tensions within a tightknit village, along with various aspects of Kiwi society, are laid out with real authority, but it is Symon’s copper Sam, self-deprecating and very human, who represents the writer’s real achievement’ Guardian 

‘Lively evocation of small-town life, with a plot that grabs the reader’s attention with a heart-stopping opening and doesn’t let go’ The Times

‘An achievement that blends heart-stopping thrills with deep, believable characters in a stark New Zealand setting. It will leave readers reaching for the next Sam Shephard mystery’ Foreword Reviews

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When the body of a young mother is found washed up on the banks of the Mataura River, a small rural community is rocked by her tragic suicide. But all is not what it seems.

Sam Shephard, sole-charge police constable in Mataura, soon discovers the death was no suicide and has to face the realisation that there is a killer in town. To complicate the situation, the murdered woman was the wife of her former lover. When Sam finds herself on the list of suspects and suspended from duty, she must cast aside her personal feelings and take matters into her own hands.

To find the murderer … and clear her name.

A taut, atmospheric and page-turning thriller, Overkill marks the start of an unputdownable and unforgettable series from one of New Zealand’s finest crime writers.

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‘A sassy heroine, fabulous sense of place, and rip-roaring stories with a twist’ Kate Mosse

‘Symon has created a compelling series lead, and her treatment of small-town New Zealand is superbly atmospheric. This one’s a cracker’ Liam McIlvanney

‘Overkill certainly feels like the beginning of something great. It’s a clever first novel and a dark thriller that’s well-paced and well-plotted … with a satisfying and fitting ending’ CultureFly

‘Symon nicely balances action, character and story in a well-drawn rural setting, and realistically speckles the book with light-hearted moments and humour throughout’ Kiwi Crime

‘Powerful, coolly assured, and an absolute belter of a read’ LoveReading

‘The key to the novel for me is definitely the humorous portrayal of the one-woman police band, both extremely naïve and too eager to prove herself in the eyes of her superiors and against the silent backdrop of her parents’ disappointment’ Crime Review

‘With a twisty plot, a protagonist who shines and beautifully written observations of the cruellest things, Overkill is crime fiction at its best and this is an outstanding book. I predict that this series is going to soar here in the UK and it deserves to’ Crime Watch

‘The author’s style of storytelling is smooth and engaging, making Overkill very easy to read, which is enough to keep you cranking through the pages. The ending is a cracker … We’ll look forward to the next in the series because with the author’s storytelling skills, the first is a pleasure to read’ Crime Fiction Lover

‘Overkill is Symon’s first novel, but it reads like the polished effort of a genre veteran. More, please’ Booklist

• Language: English
• Publisher: ORENDA BOOKS
• Release date: Jun 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912374281

Vanda Symon

Vanda Symon is a crime writer, TV presenter and radio host from Dunedin, New Zealand, and the chair of the Otago Southland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors. The Sam Shephard series has climbed to number one on the New Zealand bestseller list, and also been shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime novel. She currently lives in Dunedin, with her husband and two sons.

Reviews for Overkill

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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. I'll have a hard time preventing myself from promoting it up my reading list in the next week or so. There's an extract from RINGMASTER at the end of OVERKILL. It is also a Sam Shepherd title.

[bsquaredinoz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book opens with young mother Gaby Knowes being murdered: the killer threatening Gaby’s baby daughter to ensure the murder goes smoothly. Although Gaby does what she can to leave clues that her death is not the suicide it is supposed to look like, the lone Police Constable in town, Sam Shephard, at first assumes Gaby did take her own life. However discrepancies soon appear and and Sam calls in the assistance of a full investigative team from a nearby city. Shortly afterwards Sam is thrown of the case but continues to investigate matters on her own.

Sam Shepherd is a likable and quite engaging character. She reminds me of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone in many ways. She shares the doggedness and disregard for her own safety in the pursuit of answers and can also be a little childish to her own detriment. Sam had a personal connection to this particular case and the way she dealt with her feelings over the course of the book was very thoughtful. There were a lot of other characters glimpsed but not many were terribly well fleshed out and I thought the book would have benefited from another ‘major’ character to participate in the action and help develop the plot. For me Symon did a better job of depicting the small farming and manufacturing town of Mataurain New Zealand. There’s a nice combination of local flavour and shared traits with isolated communities the world over: people look after their own, are distrustful of strangers and love a good gossip about their neighbours.

In the end the plot held together although I found myself struggling with elements of it during the middle of the story. There were things that didn’t ring true, such as the ferocity with which Sam was removed from the case and the interactions between Sam and the murdered woman’s husband who is Sam’s own ex lover. Possibly due to everything being told from Sam’s perspective there were parts of the story that were undeveloped. Why, for example, were Sam’s colleagues so willing to accept the possibility of her own guilt when, normally, Police are slow to accept the guilt of ‘one of their own’? However the last third of the book was quite a page turner and the ultimate resolution was both well crafted and very credible.

Overall this was an entertaining debut novel and I will certainly look for the next in the series which looks to move Sam to a bigger city which is a smart move on the part of Symon as there’s a limit to how many interesting crimes can take place in a small town (Cabot Cove excluded of course).

My rating 3.5/5

[austcrimefiction · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We've got this little dog... Jedda is a 3 year old Australian terrier female. She's short, red-golden haired, extremely independent, determined to the point of obsession, friendly but can switch quickly into extreme bolshie and she is absolutely and utterly incapable of stepping away from an argument. She's the sort of dog that will continue the fight after she's been physically picked up and carried away from the conflict point. I suspect if I'd read OVERKILL before we'd got that dog, there would have been a strong case put for naming her Sam.OVERKILL is written from Sam's viewpoint. Which is a tricky approach as the reader is going to have to like Sam, or at least feel some sense of connection with her, and be comfortable that Sam is fairly investigating this death. Which is complicated because the grief-stricken widower is Sam's ex-lover. Somebody that you'd have to be dead or thick not have noticed Sam still holds quite a torch for. That, and some really ... well let's go with naive rather than stupid actions, means it's not a big step for the powers that be to suspend Sam from the investigation because she's made herself more than suspicious. Perhaps a little unfairly as it was Sam that first wonders if this death wasn't more than a tragic suicide and it's her sniffing around that finds the forged prescription that triggers the murder enquiry in the first place.Needless to say, a piddling little technicality like "suspicion" and "suspended" isn't going to stop Sam, anymore than a cow manure shampoo or a few stitches in the head. (And that's got to be one of the funniest scenes I've read in years - thinking about it still made me cry with laughter when we were changing our own ute tyre the other day!)Whilst there's always the exception to the rule, in the main there are some elements that are kind of expected in some forms of Crime Fiction. With your cop protagonist it doesn't hurt that they are a bit of a self-starter. It works well if there's conflict with higher authorities, and suspension allows your cop to head off into somewhat tricky "procedural" territory. There's really nothing wrong with using some formulaic elements in a book provided that they aren't one-dimensional and there's enough other elements for a reader to identify with to allow you to forgive the occasional blatant setup. Where OVERKILL compensates in spades is in the main characters. Sam and her best friend, housemate Maggie are a good pairing - whilst Maggie takes no active part in the investigation part of the novel, she's the calm in Sam's chaos. And the affection, sarcasm, pithy commentary and observations between the two of them are frequently very very touching and funny.Part of what I really liked about these books was that sense of humour. Frequently self-deprecating, the humorous touches are part of what makes the first-person voice work. At no stage is Sam overbearingly smug or self-serving. She's flawed and human and probably harder on herself than anybody around her could ever hope to be. OVERKILL is the first book in what is now a 4 book series, and having read the next two before I went back to re-read this one, I can see the developmental elements in this debut. Every series, after all, has to start somewhere and there's nothing worse than a debut book that says and does it all. Sam has places to go, people to annoy, problems to solve, ladders to climb, snakes to slide back down again. You just have to hope that 4 books isn't the end and there's a lot more of Sam in the future. (Expect a flurry of these reviews - I've been slack and need to catch up with talking about this terrific series!)

[pgchuis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This started out strongly with Sam, the sole police officer in Mataura, called to look into the disappearance (soon discovered to be the murder) of her former boyfriend's wife. The early chapters describing Sam's investigation were well-paced and interesting, but then Sam is suspended and made a suspect by the regional detectives, due to her former relationship. From that point on Sam is treated extraordinarily badly by the other police officers, acts petulantly and with incredible foolhardiness, and eventually (of course) uncovers the (extremely unlikely) motive for the murder.Strong NZ setting.