Culture

Bound is the fourth book in Vanda Symon’s crime novel series starring Detective Sam Shephard, and it opens with a hell of a bang (kind of literally; there’s a reason why the murder victim’s face is described as “just dripping meat, bone and brain”). In fact, the opening made me think “Wow, she’s really going balls to the wall, isn’t she? This is going to be awesome!”


 
And then it wasn’t. Not quite. Mind you, of Symon’s series, I’ve only read one other one (The Ringmaster), and since that book her style has grown more confident and assured. There’s also a well brought-out sense of place in this book, which is especially nice since Symon’s novels are all set in Dunedin, so a Dunedinite like me could really picture all the locales mentioned. But the novel’s opening really made me want to find out ‘whodunnit’, and after about a hundred pages, Symon seems to become more interested in delving into Sam’s personal life. Even though Symon manages to tie the personal stuff in with the crime stuff thematically, it doesn’t completely alleviate the fact that in terms of pace, the plot slows down and gets flabby in the middle. Frankly, I got a little bored.
 
Sure, Sam goes through some pretty heavy stuff, but I just wasn’t that interested. Maybe it’s because Sam is just so plucky and smart and tough and moral and good with victims and… snore. Doesn’t she ever make mistakes? You know, like the rest of us humans? Actually, in general I found her characters to be rather cardboard-y. Her portrayal of Blair Harvey-Boyd in particular made me wince. Okay, we get it, he’s a bit fruity. Stop banging on about it. It stopped being funny about eighteen pages ago.
 
So Bound starts with a hiss and a roar and seems to end with a whimper (or at least a solution to the mystery that feels rushed, and thus a little implausible). But there are enough good things in Bound to suggest that Symon is growing with each installment. Hopefully she figures out how to balance the personal with the procedural in her next book.
(2.5/5)