Vanda Symon
Vanda Symon lives in that little Utopia at the bottom of the world called New Zealand. She inherited outrageous hair from her Fijian father and a over-fondness for tea and pun-battles from her Kiwi mother. Her superpower is being the person who goes around at buffets and pot luck dinners and eats the last remaining item left on the plate that everyone else is too polite to take.
Her greatest weakness is an inability to say no. But this has lead to an incredibly rich and happy life doing everything from hosting a radio show and interviewing famous people at writers’ festivals, to washing the gross sweaty fencing jackets for the sports club over the school holidays.
Vanda has a PhD from the University of Otago on the communication of science through crime. She has an undergraduate degree in Pharmacy and worked as a community pharmacist and palliative care pharmacist before concentrating on her writing career. She now works at Va’a o Tautai – the Centre for Pacific Health at the University of Otago – as a research fellow looking at dementia in aged Pacific people.
Vanda is the author of the Detective Sam Shephard series and of the standalone psychological thriller The Faceless.
When Vanda isn’t doing her day job, or imagining inventive ways to kill people, she can be found pottering in the garden or on the business end of a sword.
Books by Vanda Symon
New Zealand detective Sam Shephard returns to investigate a shooting. Her colleagues think this is an open-and-shut case, but Shephard has her doubts.
Reviewed on 30 April 2022 by Chris Roberts
Detective Sam Shephard fights unfair criticism from her boss as the Dunedin police tackle the murder of a student in the Botanic Garden.
Reviewed on 26 October 2019 by Chris Roberts
Sam Shepard, the only policewoman in the small rural town of Mataura, New Zealand, investigates the death of a young mother Gaby Knowes. Apparent suicide was in fact a murder, and the victim was married to Sam’s ex-boyfriend. Sam finds herself the main suspect and suspended from duty but decides to find the killer anyway and clear her name.
Reviewed on 23 February 2019 by Ewa Sherman
