Tag: Candice Fox

Book review: Liar Liar by James Patterson and Candice Fox

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Ok, so I may have had a little binge…Liar Liar by James Patterson and Candice Fox is book 3 in the Harriet Blue series.

Detective Harriet Blue is clear about two things. Regan Banks deserves to die. And she’ll be the one to pull the trigger.

In Liar Liar Harry is on a mission to hunt down serial killer Regan Banks who killed her brother. But she is not searching for him with procedural justice in mind. She’s gone rogue and wants to kill him. Because some people deserve to die. But it is not a one way chase because Regan is hunting Harry as well, and the police are looking for both of them. 

Police bungle Regan Banks arrest, deadly serial kiler still at large. Two found dead; scene suggests Regan Banks alive and well. Where is Harriet Blue? Speculation rife detective is in league with killer.

Regan knows a lot about Harry and the people she cares about, going all the way back to her childhood. He’s using what he knows without remorse to try and draw her to him.

The public had never liked Harry. Had never believed that a Sex Crimes detective didn’t know her brother was a serial killer. 

The authors take us deeper into Harry’s psyche as she walks on the wild side driven by grit, determination, loyalty, and a thirst for vengeance. It is hard not to like Harry, as crazy as she is.

I didn’t sleep much. But when I did, my mind turned in circles, repeating their names like a mantra, connecting them end to end. When I was really tired, my lips moved. I sometimes woke to the sound of my own whispering.

Liar Liar is all action, violence and plot twists. It’s dark and gritty and suspenseful.

Book review: Fifty Fifty by James Patterson and Candice Fox

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Fifty Fifty by James Patterson and Candice Fox is book two in the Harriet Blue series. I have not read book one, but it didn’t matter, so don’t let that issue put you off. I read the novel as I am a huge Candice Fox fan and her finger prints are all over this one.

I’d been talking about the ‘key’ to my brother’s case since his arrest. The thing that freed him. A piece of false testimony. A surprise witness. Something, anything. I’d been looking into Same’s case, and I hadn’t found the key that proved he wasn’t the killer. But I had high hopes.

Detective Harriet Blue has a short fuse and anger issues stemming from an upbringing in foster care. When her brother Sam is arrested and charged with being a serial killer, Harriet is the only person who believes he is innocent and she is determined to catch the real killer. 

The only sound was the dull thump of his body on the pavement, the whisper of his styling robes, a big bird bought down out of the sky by a rifle blast.

There is one person who holds the key to Sam’s innocence, but she is locked up in a cellar being starved by the real serial killer.

You’re a hothead. And I love that about you. It’s half of what makes you a good cop. Your fearlessness. Your fire. But you need to get away from here before you do some real damage.

After losing her cool on the steps of the courthouse and assaulting a prosecution lawyer, Harriet is sent to Last Chance Valley in the outback where a diary has been found by the roadside containing plans of a massacre in the town of 75 people. It becomes apparent the plot may be legitimate when the former Chief of Police is blown up out in the scrublands. Harry has the local (not very experienced) cop to work with along with Elliot, an over enthusiastic counter-terrorism task force member who thinks he should be in charge.

I flipped through the diary. The only thing I could think that united the spree killers in the diary was their rage. Their desire to be punishers.

Back in Sydney, Harry’s partner Detective Edwards Wittacker is keeping an eye on her brother’s trial and notices some of the evidence doesn’t make sense.

Most of my life I’d wavered over a very thin line between light and dark shades of my being. There were things in me that were frightening. How quick I was to anger. How much I liked hurting people sometimes…Most of the time, my light half won out, and the shadows and smoke were sent recoiling to where they belonged, not completely driven out, but controlled…But sometimes the halves collided. 

Fifty Fifty has two plots for the price of one. While at times a bit overly dramatic, it’s a pacey novel that keeps the reader hooked. Harry’s wild antics steal the show. She’s ferocious, smart, quick to fight, has nerves of steel and a heart of gold. If you like a quick, gritty bold crime read, Fifty Fifty could be for you.

Book review: The Murder Inn by James Patterson and Candice Fox

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I really like the idea of collaborative writing – that is where two or more authors work together to produce a creative work. I have dabbled in collaboration with poetry, but find the idea of collaborating on long form fiction enticing. I imagine it could be very motivating and playful, as well as a challenging learning experience.

One of my favourite crime authors, Candice Fox, began collaborating with American author James Patterson in 2015 and the two have written seven novels together, all of which have been New York Times best sellers.

The Murder Inn is one of Fox and Pattersons collaborations. The Murder Inn, published in 2024, is a sequel to the 2019 collaboration, The Inn, featuring ex cop Bill Robinson. The story also reads as a stand alone. 

Ex cop Bill Robinson runs an Inn with his partner Susan (ex FBI) in Massachusetts. The Inn houses a ragtag collection of tenants. Bill is trying to help Nick, a veteran and guest at the Inn who suffers from PTSD episodes believing someone is trying to kill him.  

The Inn by the Sea was a simple construction: its weather-board exterior, recently painted sunflower-yellow, did little to shut out the freezing Gloucester winters, and its mismatched steel and wood bones rambling with poorly thought-out extensions and adjustments, creaked as the people inside it moved. But it was those people and their stories that give the house its heartbeat.

When Shauna, the widow of Bill’s former colleague (a crooked cop) is assaulted by some thugs who work for a notorious drug lord called Norman Driver who has moved into town, she fights back. The incident uncovers some of her husbands deeply buried secrets. Bill also tries to help Shauna and finds himself in the firing line as well.

Driver had spent most of his twenties feeling the cold hand of Lady Disaster on his shoulder whenever an officer stepped into a diner he was sitting in, or when a police squad car stopped beside him at a traffic light. Pushing sixty now, he simply smiled and nodded.

The personal dramas, dark secrets, betrayals, murders, and violence seeping out of The Murder Inn set a cracking pace and the multiple points of view and plot lines converge to tell a compelling story for thriller lovers.

Book review: Devil’s Kitchen by Candice Fox

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Another great Candice Fox crime novel. Devil’s Kitchen was a red hot holiday read. Rogue New York firefighters using their good Samaritan jobs as cover to heist millions of dollars from banks, art galleries and jewelry stores. The crew leader is ruthless in his demand for loyalty. They need to protect their cover, but each of the men has a secret.

Fire is loud. It calls to people. Probably had been doing that since the dawn of time, Ben guessed. 

Enter Andy Nearland, the newest member of the Engine 99 fire crew. In fact Andy is an undercover specialist operative hired by the FBI to find out what the hell is going on with the robberies. She’s also tasked with tracking down the missing partner and child of one of the crew. Andy is smart, sassy, and ruthless, and not averse to using her looks as a secret weapon. But can she outsmart four desperate fire fighters?

Andy looked at Ben. Met his frantic gaze. She saw it in his eyes, the scene playing out. Andy taking the bullet in the brain. Her body rag-dolling on the floor. Ben next.

In typical Fox style Devil’s Kitchen is an action packed thriller. The story is crafted with rigorous research, quality writing, bold characters, humour and plenty of tension. Keep ‘em coming Candice!

Book review: High Wire by Candice Fox

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I went along to Sisters in Crime’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards a couple of weeks ago for an event to celebrate women’s crime writing. Our compares for the evening were authors Candice Fox and Sarah Bailey (you can find reviews from both authors on this blog). I’ve been a big fan of Candice Fox, in particular, for years. Not only is she a formidable crime writer, but she seems like a genuinely good egg, and as I discovered at the awards she is also very funny.

I purchased Candice’s most recent novel High Wire, published in September and gobbled it up in a few days. In the acknowledgements Fox says that High Wire is a kind of love letter to Lee Child and his well known character Jack Reacher.

This was bad. Very, very bad. Because whoever these guys were, they had either law enforcement or military training. 

Set in the remote desert of north east South Australia, High Wire is outback gothic crime fiction – riveting, moody and brimming with suspense, as well as a good dose of Fox humour. In a hurry to get to his dying girlfriend after the airport is closed, Veteran Harvey Buck takes the High Wire, a secret track cut through the outback from Broome to Sydney. He comes across a women, Clare Holland, whose car broke down and caught fire, and offers her a ride. A bit further down the track, the pair are ambushed, strapped into bomb vests and thrown into the back of a truck. They are driven across the desert and forced to complete a number of criminal acts.

Harvey stopped his vehicle, got out, looked all around. Saw the same thing he’d been seeing for the past three and a half hours. Emptiness. One flat black mass, slightly darker tan the black mass blanketed over it, peppered with stars and milky galaxies he’d known the name of once.

Meanwhile local copper, Senior Sergeant Edna Norris, rescues an oversized teenage boy called Talon from a man in an isolated farmhouse who had posed as a teenage girl online. While driving the youth to send him back to Adelaide, Edna receives a call to attend to a burnt out car on the High Wire. The pair find Clare’s burnt out vehicle then stumble across Harvey’s car with the body of a balaclava clad man lying beside it. The pair start to form theories about what happened and are soon pursuing the crime.

Edna started the car and put it into gear. ‘Buckle up, kid,’ she said. ‘We’re taking a little detour.’

As Clare and Harvey’s pasts unfold to reveal why they found themselves in their dilemma, Edna and Talon grow closer and work together to solve the unfolding crimes. 

But he decided, there in the dark, that he would go on, anyway. Even without strength, or fight, or a solid sense of how he could change his outcome. Because going always onward, even if it was directly towards pain, was better than the pain of lying down and wondering in his final moments what one more step could have brought him.

The things I love most about Candice’s work are her characterisation and ability to create really complex impossible plots and make them believable.

Book review: Fire with Fire by Candice Fox

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Fire with Fire, the inestimable Candice Fox’s latest thriller is another cracker. Being a big fan, I have read all her books so I’m a bit gushy about the Australian author. And she seems like a good egg as well.

Constable Lynette Lamb gets fired on the first day of her new job as a cop and goes looking for the one guy who can help her. Detective Charlie Hoskins is in hospital after a near miss with death at the hands of the Death Machines biker gang after being outed when working undercover. The two become unexpected partners when Lamb confronts Charlie to help her get her job back and they are shot at by a gun toting thug, forcing them to make a hasty get away together.

In the hall outside the locker room, she was the new kid in the schoolyard; frozen, vulnerable. When she reached the bullpen, the officer who’d led her to the locker room was standing at the coffee station, one hand on the counter, the other pinching the bridge of her nose. The fuck my life pose. The colleague she was listening to touched her elbow in a consolatory manner and walked away.

Ryan and Elsie Delaney have been pushed over the edge. Desperate parents whose daughter, Tilly, went missing on a beach two years earlier. The girl was never found and the only piece of evidence was lost. They take matters into their own hands and hold up hostages in the police forensic labs – demanding something be done immediately to find out what happened to their kid.

‘My husband Ryan and I have taken over Laboratory 21 of the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. And we intend to…to do a lot of damage here…if our demands are not met.’

Candice’s characters are bold oddballs, her plots are tight and each book is a pacy page turner. Fire with Fire is no exception – a Hollywood action thriller on paper, it was over too soon. If only she could write faster…

For other review of Candice Fox book reviews see Hades, Eden, Gathering Dark, The Chase, and 2 Sisters Detective Agency (a collaboration with James Patterson).

Book review: 2 Sisters Detective Agency by James Patterson, Candice Fox

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Candice Fox partnered with James Patterson to write this cracker of a crime novel. The two met at a cocktail party and have worked on a few books together, most notably the Harriet Blue series. 2 Sisters Detective Agency is their latest offering, a stand alone detective thriller.

Rhonda Bird is a fabulous character. A fat, pink haired attorney who wears rock band t-shirts and spends her time helping young people on the wrong side of the law. When she gets a call advising that her estranged father, Earl, is dead and she needs to return to LA to sort out his affairs, she does so reluctantly, anticipating being landed with all his debts. What she finds are two unexpected surprises.

As big as I am – 260 pounds, some of it well-earned muscle and some of it long-maintained fat – there’s no point trying to fit in with the crowd. The pink hair was just the latest shade in a rotating kaleidoscope of colors I applied to my half shaved, wavy quiff, and I always wore rock bank shirts in the courtroom under my blazer.

Earl bequeathed Rhonda his dodgy private detective agency and his fifteen year old obnoxious, black, leggy, Instagram influencer daughter, Baby, whose existence Rhonda was unaware of. Whilst Rhonda grapples with who her father was and what to do about the brat half-sister she’s been gifted, the two women find themselves in the firing line of an angry Russian criminal cartel and an awakened ex-assassin with a lust for revenge, thanks to Earl’s dodgy operations.

As you’d expect from Candice Fox, 2 Sisters Detective Agency is jam packed with bigger than life bold characters, plenty of action and laugh out loud humour.

I’m a huge Candice fan (previous reviews here, here, here, and here), and could see her fingerprints all over this story, but she doesn’t get all the accolades as the work was a collaboration. I’ve never read James Patterson before, but will do so now as I found myself pondering whilst I read the book how they worked together. Did they write alternate chapters? Did they choose characters and write one each? Did they edit each other’s work? I imagine collaborative writing adds an interesting zing to the usually solitary process. Perhaps reading some of Patterson’s work will reveal his style and enable me to tell more easily which voice is him and which is Candice.

I started reading 2 Sisters Detective Agency the day after Melbourne’s long lockdown ended and was so captured I had to drag myself away from the story to attend to the social catch ups I’d prearranged. I almost wished lockdown had been extended for a day or so to give me the excuse to just lie on the sofa and get lost in the adventure. Highly recommended.

Candice Fox, The Chase cover image

Book review: The Chase by Candice Fox

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Candice Fox, all-around good guy, champion of emerging writers, writer of creepy thrillers. I’ve been a fan of Candice Fox since reading her first novel, Hades. Her crime novels are fast-paced and brimming with big bold characters doing outrageous things. She takes us to the limits of believability and holds us there, peering over the cliff face.

The Chase is set in the USA and I suspect Americans are the primary audience for the novel, though perhaps American culture simply allows Candice to take things a step further.

Every year Proghorn Correctional Facility had a Christmas softball game between the wardens and the inmates.

The warden’s families come on a bus through the Nevada desert to make a day of it. This year they are held hostage under the gaze of a sniper in order to free the entire prison population, some of the most dangerous in the country. The incident prompts the biggest manhunt in history. The novel takes the reader on a journey with some of them.

Celine Osbourne is in charge of the death row prisoners. She takes her job, and the break out very seriously. She’s also obsessed with one prisoner in particular and makes it her mission to track down and capture John Kradle.

She pinched the tobacco between her thumb and forefinger, flicked out the rolling paper with a touch more flair than she probably needed to, and laid the little caterpillar of brown fibres down in its thin, dry bed. Three boys, all cousins of hers, crowded in to watch her lick and roll the cigarette. Celine put the smoke to her lips and lit up. Their eyes were big and wild with excitement. It was a thrilling display on many levels. They were all farm kids, and lighting a match for any reason in a barn full of hay was like flipping the bird to Jesus Christ.

John Kradle had been on death row for five years after being found guilty of murdering his family.

He didn’t believe in all the ghost stuff. But he showed up anyway. He figured that was what you did when you loved someone. You nodded and laughed and chipped in with a ‘She’s right, you know. I’ve seen it!’ occasionally.

The breakout is Kradle’s one chance to set the record straight, prove his innocence. Trouble is, a serial killer and Celine are on his tail.

Kradle put his hands on the table, stared at them, and felt a wave of relief roll over him. A part of him had known, in all the years that Christine had been missing, that she had left simply because she was broken. That even if an explanation ever came, it wouldn’t be rational or healing to him.

I could feel the heat of the desert, the desperation, rage and grief of the characters as the complexity of their inner worlds drove their choices – good and bad. The Chase kept me turning the pages and sneaking moments in my day to keep reading. And how lovely to get to the end of find that Candice has dedicated the book to those of us unpublished writers who keep plugging away, hoping that our work will one day find a home.

I have dedicated this book to all aspiring authors. It’s not an easy road. Waiting. Trying. Daydreaming. Being rejected. Having your hopes destroyed and trying to rebuild them. It’s lonely, frustrating, and tedious. But whatever you do, my advice is never to let it become hopeless. Only you have control over that.

Book review: Gathering Dark by Candice Fox

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Candice Fox’s latest novel Gathering Dark, in its second print run already, is a page turning romp of a thriller set in Los Angeles and spilling over with larger than life characters.

Recently released from jail, Blair Harbour was a well respected paediatric surgeon leading a privileged life and about to become a mother, then she shot and killed her next door neighbour, went to jail and had her child taken from her. Now she works the graveyard shift at a cartel owned gas station while she tries to get her life back together. When she is held up one night by the daughter of the woman she’d shared a cell with, and her cell mate, Sneak, turns up looking for help to track down her daughter who has disappeared, Blair agrees.

Screaming would have been a terrible idea. If I startled her, that slippery finger was going to jerk on the trigger and blow my brains all over the cigarette cabinet behind me. I didn’t want to be wasted in my stupid uniform, my hat emblazoned with a big pink kangaroo and the badge on my chest that truthfully read ‘Blair’ but lied ‘I love to serve!’

Gathering Dark

Jessica Sanchez is a detective who doesn’t quite fit the force and is being ostracised by her colleagues because an old man left his fortune to her after she solved the murder case of his daughter. The mansion he bequeathed her is next door to the house where the son of Blair, who Sanchez put away for murder, now lives.

But then she saw the blood on his hands, all over his face, her neck. Jessica thought of vampires and zombies, of magical, impossible things, and had to steady herself against a pool table. Her mind split as the full force of terror hit, half of it wailing and screaming at her to flee, the other half assessing what this was: a vicious assault in progress. Assailant likely under the influence of drugs. Bath salts–they’d been hitting the streets hard in the past few weeks, making kids do crazy things: gouge their own eyes out, kill animals, ride their bikes off cliffs. She was watching a man eat a woman alive.

Gathering Dark

What unfolds is a complex web of lies, crime and deception, packaged in a tight plot, with well crafted dialogue, rolling prose and a good dose of black humour. I loved the tough female characters, the bad ass baddies, oh, and the gopher, got to love the gopher.

Candice Fox has been running a regular Wednesday Facebook Live write club of late. You can logon and write with her for an hour, then take part in a half hour Q&A where she answers all your writing questions. She’s an incredibly generous, funny and talented writer. I have enjoyed her writing since picking up her first novel Hades, but am now a lifetime fan, so if you are a crime reader and haven’t yet devoured any of her work – get onto it.

Book review: Hades by Candice Fox

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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.

Caste offs

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?

Cover image of Hades by Candice Fox
Big fish

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.