BOUND

Vanda Symon
Penguin Books - $30

The author lives in Dunedin with her husband and two young sons. One would think that would be enough to keep her busy but no she also hosts a monthly radio show called Write On, is heavily involved with various community activities, runs an active blog, and then on top of all that she somehow finds time to be a writer.

No ordinary writer either, a classy crime fiction novelist whose fourth novel, Bound, is published this week by Penguin Books.This follows Overkill (2007), The Ringmaster (2008), and Containment (2009).

I read a lot of crime fiction and I really rate Symon as up there among the best with this latest novel.. I do have to admit that I am slightly in love with her sassy, feisty, risk-taking, coffee-addicted cop, Detective Sam Shephard although her relationship with fellow-cop Paul Frost seems set to become a more permanent arrangement.We'll see.

Sam Shephard is a cop in the classic mould of crime fiction cops and has been well developed by Symon as a believable, sometimes stubborn and difficult character. In some ways she reminds me of Simon Kernick's equally feisty London-based cop, DI Tina Boyd.

Bound is set in and around Dunedin, the author's home for the past 5 years,  a place she clearly loves and knows intimately. It opens with a brutal home invasion in which a man is murdered, executed actually, while his wife is bound, gagged and left to watch. So begins a 314 page action-packed novel which I found very difficult to put down.

Another winner from one of NZ's finest crime fiction writers.

Footnote:
Pamela Gordon reports on her Facebook page on the launch of BOUND:

Vanda looked stunning for the launch of her new novel BOUND, in which the first murder takes place up the road from Seacliff Hospital!
So yes in Chapter One there's a witty nod to Janet Frame:
 "In its heyday they'd incarcerated many a poor soul there, including our world-famous writer Janet Frame, who was put there due to the fact she was creative and different. Nowadays they gave you fellowships for that, not lobotomies."