Map Monday – Reaper

Submitted: 9th March 2026

Reaper – Vanda Symon

Where are we going?

Auckland

A killer is hunting Auckland’s homeless. No one cares. No one but Max Grimes. For he is one of them. and this are his community.

Map for Reaper locations

Auckland

Oh you really see the streets of Auckland under a very interesting light here. Even the mortuary gets a unique description:

“The Auckland City Mortuary may have looked pretty innocuous from the outside , but the inside represented a world of pain.”

The cemetery at the start of the book gets a very poignant line or two:

“Some might see it as maudlin but he found it a place of reassuring permanence in a world of transience.”

reaper

A crime novel about a homeless man who investigates the person killing his own kind. Now that is an interesting angle on a murder mystery. More so as it allows the author to really dig deep into that wave of people who find themselves destitute on a city’s streets. The homeless community is not one I am familiar with – luckily – but then I feel we should all know more about them, and care. It was an insightful way to see a city – through the eyes of a homeless man. The fear, the unknown, the hunger – added to the search for the truth was a killer angle ( excuse the pun) for a crime novel with heart.