#BlogTour OVERKILL by Vanda Symon #Overkill @vandasymon @OrendaBooks #randomthingstours #BookReview

Hello! Today I’m very pleased to welcome you to JuliaPalooza for my stop on the Blog Tour for Overkill by Vanda Symon, which was published in June 2018 by Orenda Books and is available via the links below.

Overkill is book 1 in the PC Sam Shephard series: an action-packed, tension-filled and atmospheric police procedural set in rural New Zealand.

I am delighted to be sharing my tour spot today with Annie over at The Misstery so please go and check out her thoughts too.

About the book

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 said her personal feelings and take matters into her own hands. To find the murderer… and clear her name. A taut, atmospheric and pageturning thriller, Overkill marks the start of an unputdownable and unforgettable series from one of New Zealand s finest crime writers.

Goodreads | Amazon UK | Amazon US

Overkill certainly starts with a blood-pressure-raising prologue which kick-starts a solid police procedural.

Overkill is really well written and the descriptions of small-town New Zealand were fresh and evocative. The pace for me did slow down a little early on while we waited for the police to catch up with what we already knew, but that gave us a chance to get to know the town and the characters.

PC Sam Shephard really made this book for me: she is a practical, likeable and very human lead character. She is smart and funny and ballsy. I could fully empathise with her feelings, thoughts and actions throughout.

I really enjoyed her relationship with her flatmate Maggie and their banter and bickering produced some real laugh out loud moments, as did Sam’s narration, in an otherwise fairly serious book. I will be interested to see where Vanda Symons takes her next!

A huge thank you to Orenda Books for my copy of Overkill and to Anne Cater at #RandomThingsTours for my spot on the Blog Tour!

If you enjoyed my review, please consider liking and/or sharing and, of course, buying the book: Goodreads | Amazon UK | Amazon US

About the author

Vanda’s first novel Overkill, was written while juggling the demands of a 6 month old baby and a two year old. She suspects the prologue to Overkill was written in a state of sleep deprivation induced paranoia brought about by middle of the night feeds and imagining every awful thing that could possibly happen to her family. None of them ever did. Reading that prologue still makes her cry. A little time has elapsed and the six-month old and two-year old are now teenagers. As well as trying to raise two wonderful human beings, she has added three more Detective Sam Shephard novels to the series and written the stand alone psychological thriller The Faceless.

When she isn’t writing, Vanda can be found digging around in her garden in Dunedin, or on the business end of a fencing foil. She has fenced since high school and still competes in national and international competitions. As well as competing she coaches, and because she likes to get involved, boots and all, is the president of Fencing South and on the board of Fencing New Zealand. Vanda is a founding member of the Dunedin Crime Writers Association, whose raison d’etre is for its members to drink beer or wine and talk crime writing at their favourite pub.

You can follow Vanda on Twitter or her website.

About the Blog Tour

Please check out the rest of the tour for Overkill: