Blog tour: Reaper by Vanda Symon

This post is part of a blog tour organised by Random Things Blog Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.

‘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.’

Reaper, by Vanda Symon, is the follow-up to Faceless. Ex-detective Max Grimes is still sleeping rough in downtown Auckland, but is in a better position than before, with a casual job cleaning at a gym, where he can also shower and store his things. Otherwise, he spends his days checking in with his fellow homeless, and keeping up with current affairs at the library.

When a homeless man known as The Ferret is found dead one morning, it appears he was a victim of the freezing winter temperatures, and when, just a day later, Max himself finds another of his peers lifeless, the police are quick to suspect the same cause of death. However, rumours start to circulate among the homeless community that there’s a “Reaper” on the loose, and when a third victim is discovered, Max persuades his former colleague, Sergeant Meredith Peters, to take a closer look at the deaths.

Max’s near-constant presence on the streets, and his keen attention to what’s going on around him inevitably put him on the Reaper’s radar, and he’s singled out for a different, less straightforward fate than previous victims. On top of this, Max has been approached by an unwelcome figure from his past, who has an audacious request for him…

Reaper is an enjoyable read I absolutely sped through, as the plot moves forward from virtually page to page. The eponymous perpetrator is interesting to follow, as not only do they use a different method for each victim, but some of the methods themselves are highly unusual and challenging to detect.

Max continues to be a sympathetic character whose irrepressible inquisitiveness sometimes leads him to make questionable decisions and get into trouble. As in Faceless, he goes out of his way to look out for the rest of the homeless community, knows everyone’s name and story, and helps his peers even though he doesn’t have much himself. I was inwardly howling at the injustice when the Reaper deflected police attention onto him!

With the focus very much on the fast-developing situations around Max and the Reaper, we only get to see Max’s police contact (and former work partner) Meredith in a work context. However, I didn’t feel like I was lacking in knowledge about her personality or home life, thanks to the skilful way Symon incorporates minor details into the narrative. These include what Meredith has for lunch, a reference to an ex who got to keep their dog, and her antipathy towards the local mayor.

I very much shared these feelings towards Mayor Smith, who can’t conceal his distaste for rough sleepers, and uses the murders as an excuse to try to corral them into community centres on the pretext of keeping them safe, thus blaming the victims and taking away a precious thing they still have – their freedom.

This attitude, as well as the time and effort it takes Max and Meredith to get the murders recognised as such, builds on the messages Symon conveys in Faceless: that the deaths of homeless people are too often considered to be inevitable outcomes of a lifestyle they’ve chosen, and less worthy of police or public attention than those of “decent” people whose ways of life are deemed “acceptable”. Through Max, she emphasises the human individuality of people living on the street.

Reaper is a fast-paced, heart-in-your-mouth, and deceptively deep thriller.