Overkill by Vanda Symon – Blog Tour Review.

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 aside her personal feelings and take matters into her own hands.
To find the murderer … and clear her name.

My Review

One of the reasons I enjoy fiction from this part of the world is because the characters are so brutally honest and refreshing, Shep does not disappoint and she is one of my new favourite heroines.
She is loyal, hardworking, determined,rash, pedantic but she is also quick to react, not always in the best way and at times her own worst enemy. The only person who understands her and manages to calm her down is her flat mate Maggie. I was longing to ask her just to step back a little, to calm down and see the predicament she was placing herself in. But she also made me laugh, especially with the way she talked to people who alienated her.
The prologue was one of the most chilling parts of the novel, it is one that I can still feel the desperation of the victim weeks later. The character has only a small part in the novel obviously but the shock of the murder is evident throughout the whole novel.
I could imagine this small town very easily, a town full of hardworking people who were desperately clinging to its last big employer. How many towns are like this across the world now? It is also a town that appears to thrive on gossip and when things go wrong for Shep everybody knows.
I read a lot of crime fiction and sometimes work out easily who the killer is and I had no idea why somebody wanted Gaby dead. I think that this is because the reasoning for the crime was completely different to every other crime fiction book that I have read. And it is utterly believable.
This is the first book in the series and I hope that the others will be published soon.