Today I’m joining the blog tour for Prey. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.

The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it’s personal.

With all the witness testimony painting a picture of a dedicated church and family man, what possible motive could there have been for his murder?

But when Sam starts digging deeper into the case, it becomes apparent someone wants the sins of the past to remain hidden. And when a new potential witness to the crime is found brutally murdered, there is pressure from all quarters to solve the case before anyone else falls prey.

But is it already too late…?

Review:

I absolutely love this series and Prey could well be my favourite one yet! Detective Sam Shephard is working her first case since returning from maternity leave, and I loved seeing how she managed her personal and professional lives, as this isn’t something I’ve seen in a lot of detective novels and the personal touch really helps me to relate to her, although I don’t need much help. I love her tenacity, her feistiness (especially with DI Johns) and her ability to think outside the box, and her banter with Paul provides some much needed relief from the heavier moments of the case.

Vanda Symon is a fabulous writer, and her ability to build settings in the readers’ minds is wonderful. I’ve never been to Dunedin, but I can picture it very clearly after reading this novel, and this makes me feel as though I am right at the heart of the action. The church, in particular, is a focal point for the investigation and this setting became especially entrenched in my mind.

The investigation that Sam is assigned is a cold case, and this means that she has very little forensic evidence to work with and many of the suspects and witnesses have moved away or died. Nevertheless, she still has a lot of people to speak to, and I was hooked trying to work out what each character’s motives could be. Vanda Symon has developed all the characters really well and I enjoyed delving deeper into their backgrounds as the investigation gathered pace.

Vanda Symon’s writing is very paced, the chapters are short, and the story is full of twists and turns which meant I was totally hooked from the beginning. Prey addresses some dark issues, so it is difficult to read at times, but I did love reading as everything unravelled. I did guess some of the twists before they were revealed, but I still loved reading as the pieces of the puzzle came together.

I hope Sam returns very soon!

Prey is available from Amazon.

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