The RingmasterThe Ringmaster

After the events described in Vanda Symon's debut crime novel Overkill, our hero Sam is now training to be a detective at Dunedin Central. The novel begins with the brutal murder of a young female student, one of a number of vicious murders in the region. Being on the lowest rung of the ladder, Sam finds herself assigned not to the murder enquiry but to the local visiting circus, which is being harassed by animal rights activists. Meanwhile, a stalker has been trashing her car and is getting nasty...Sam finds herself at the very centre of the murder investigation when she realises that the itinerary of the touring circus matches precisely the locations of the unsolved murders around the country. The murders seem to correspond with the presence of the circus in town. Sam's insight is a break-through, and soon the investigation centres on the circus and its abrasive owner Terry Benjamin. But when another young Dunedin student is murdered, the killer is now revealed to be much closer to home. Who else is on the murderer's list? The killer is now on Sam's tail and she's in great danger.