I’d known about crime writer Candice Fox for some time, but not actually picked up one of her books until recently, and what a treat it was. Hades, won the Ned Kelly Award for best debut crime novel in 2014.

Hades is an ox of a man who runs the Utulla tip, makes giant sculptures from salvaged scrap metal, and gets rid of unwanted bodies by disposing of them in the mountains of waste to decompose. When a stranger arrives and asks him to dispose of the bodies of two children, saying their deaths were an accident, Hades killed him. Then he notices the toes of one of the tiny bundles move. He keeps the children, raises them as his own.

The children grow up to be cops, crusaders of justice. Eden is dark, beautiful and aloof, and Eric her brother, brash and a stirrer of trouble. Frankie gets assigned to the station as Eden’s partner after both their former colleague are killed, and the two set out to track down a serial killer who harvests organs for people prepared pay, but not to wait. Frankie soon starts to notice something strange about the siblings he can’t quite put his finger on and starts poking and prodding around in their past. Will he live to quench his curiosity?

Fox’s voice rolls out the story like a crashing ocean wave, leaving debris in its wake. It is beautiful, poetic, Gothic and deadly. The characters are compelling anti-heroes, her plotting exquisite and her prose enthralling. I love a local tale and the novel is set in Sydney, Australia, an added bonus.

It was hard to put down and I had a few late nights of page turning in my hunger to find out what happened. Fortunately when I finished, there was a sequel available to pick up. I fear a binge is coming on, so was relieved to find she has ten novels to her name laying in wait for me.