Candice Fox has done it again, another excellent thriller. This time a detective is accused of a child abduction has to escapes attention by moving to Crimson Lake, a remote crocodile infested area in the North of Australia. He needs to work again, and teams up with an unlikely partner, a private investigator with a murderous past. The author expertly uses these circumstances to build a strange environment for them to investigate a missing person case. All the locals having a downer on both investigators deserved or undeserved, adds another dimension. This is a complex case the details of which provide a few twists and turns. Running alongside this, Ted (the detective) tries to resolve his own predicament and clear his name. Although it deals with very serious crimes it has its humorous moments with Ted's partner cycling everywhere, refusing lifts. Very different set up to the previous Candice Fox books but equally exciting and thrilling.

Absolutely brilliantly! One of the best books I've read for a long time. Realistic, gritty main characters, a story that keeps you gripped all the way through, and an ending that doesn't disappoint. I'm sad to have finished it, and I hope there's another book with these likeable, imperfect people coming soon.

This is my first novel by Candice Fox and it absolutely won't be my last. I loved Crimson Lake!! Multilayered characters, a sense of imminent doom and a quirky sense of humour throughout. Plus a coroner who I need to hear more from! Highly recommend.

This is a wonderful story of a man wrongly accused of a crime who relocates to a small town and finds himself tangled in helping to prove the innocence of another person wrongly accused. This is all done whilst he is trying to find the murderer of a local author.

I enjoyed the scenery and geese and the fact that neither of the main characters allowed thier experiences to turn them into bitter people.

Ted Conkaffey a Sydney policeman, has been allegedly accused of abducting a 13 yr old girl from a bus stop and attempting to kill her. For him it was being in the wrong place at the wrong time and lack of evidence sees him being released from prison after 8 months. With his marriage broken and all friendships dissolved he relocates to a new life on the outskirts of Cairns. But as he was never proven innocent, the nightmare can never go away. On the advice of his lawyer he teams with social outcast Amanda Pharrell, a private detective in the town of Crimson Lake. Amanda also has a history. She was accused of stabbing a fellow school friend to death and has served her time in a Brisbane prison.

What a fantastic book. There really were three threads running through this story. Ted and Amanda, (a tattooed push bike riding misfit) investigate the disappearance of Jake Scully, a local and well known author but unknown to each other, Amanda starts to investigate Ted's story and Ted researches Amanda's. These are two totally flawed but extremely likeable characters that come together and start to respect each other. Ted thought that he could hide away in a small town but word gets out and he is at the mercy of vengeful towns folk and the local police. There are just a few that he can count on...maybe as friends.

I was granted a digital copy of the book to review via Netgalley but I chose to listen to the audio book version. The narrator's raspy voice seemed to make Ted's character come to life but it did take me a while to get a handle on Amanda's character. The more I listened, the more I was totally engrossed in the storyline. The humidity, the danger of the croc's, the bullying from the local police and others all came to life.

I feel I should give this audio version a rating of 5 feather dusters or 5 dogtail wags, as it meant my house was cleaner and the dog went for longer walks while I listened. I have read that there will be another instalment and I can't wait.

This is atmospheric crime fiction set in small town Cairns in Queensland, Australia. It is intricately plotted to weave in three separate murder investigations. Detective Ted Conkaffey's life falls apart when it is alleged that he abducted and raped a young girl, Claire Bingley. He is held in prison for some months until the prosecution drops the case for insufficient evidence. His wife has left him, he hurts from being separated from his baby daughter and the shock that no-one believes that he is innocent, including all his fellow police officers. He packs his bags, and moves to Cairns hoping his life can settle down from the horror he has experienced, which turns out to be little more than a pipe dream.

He is living by Crimson Lake, with the ever present crocodiles and rescues an injured goose he names Woman and her goslings. The geese give him a reason to pick up the pieces of his life again and he joins Amanda Pharrell PI, a convicted murderer, in the investigation into the missing celebrity author, Jake Scully. Amanda is a loose canon, both fragile and tough, with a terrific line in the outrageous, the comic and an irritating habit of conversing in rhymes. Her office is inhabited by an army of cats, and despite her different personality, her and Ted, the two broken souls, connect. It appears that Jake Scully has been killed and consumed by a crocodile but there is so much more to the story which Amanda and Ted delve into including obsessive fans, a marriage that seems to barely exist, and a troubled son, Harrison.

Two brutal and arrogant local cops abuse their power as they focus on Ted and make his life increasingly stressful and miserable, trying to break up his partnership with Amanda. In the meantime, Ted is driven to delve into the murder that Amanda has been convicted of. Amanda returns the favour by looking into Ted's crime, and is joined by Fabiana, a journalist who initially stalks Ted. Ted finds there is no escape from his past, as the local community lay siege to his home, with a lynch mob mentality, wanting him out and willing to do anything to achieve this aim. This is a closed community which harbours secrets, blackmail, corruption, and murderers in its midst.

This is a beautifully written story with a compulsive narrative. The characters are to die for, so complex and interesting, having to cope with extreme circumstances and even the minor characters are remarkably well drawn. The small town is populated with people heavy on judgement and mean of spirit. I particularly loved the goose and goslings with the growing relationship with Ted, just so lovable. Definitely hope this spawns a series, there is certainly enough material for it to do so. This is brilliant crime drama which I highly recommend. Many thanks to Random House Cornerstone for an ARC.

Set in humid, small-town Cairns, this is a book with bags of personality in the writing and characters: especially in Amanda Pharrell, a convicted murderer with a nice line in rhyming doggerell! Now a PI, Amanda teams up with new arrival Ted who has been arrested but not convicted of the rape of a young girl - can the two outsiders uncover the mystery of a bestselling author's disappearance?

Fox writes well and keeps things turning over but it feels like there's an overload of baggage in having *two* investigators both being shunned by the town and with criminal pasts and spells in prison behind them - one would have added a bit of a frisson, two is overkill. To add to that, both cases are so badly put together that neither stands up to the barest scrutiny so it's hard to believe that either of them was imprisoned - it's a see-through authorial manipulation to give the characters some emotional heft with their traumatic pasts. Add to that an unbelievable solution to the mystery of the vanished author and all the good stuff (and there's plenty of that) gets undermined.

There's so much promise here in atmosphere, characters, writing that it's a shame more restraint wasn't applied and more convincing and satisfying solutions created for at least two of the crimes. Hopefully that's something that Fox will iron out in the future: 3.5 stars.

To be posted on Amazon and Goodreads

Thanks Netgalley for letting me review this book. This is the first book I have read of this author and it involves 3 crimes, the book had great characters and was very interesting to me to read about the small town cultures in Queensland. I shall definitely looking out for more books by this author

I enjoyed the story but found it difficult to read as there were no chapters. It was one big long one and I found it hard finding a place to put it down. Aside from that it was a very good read, I found myself really liking the characters and the plot was interesting and captivating.