Gone By Midnight – Candice Fox
Genre: Crime Thriller/ Suspense/ Mystery
Published: January 19, Penguin Random House UK
Swathi’s Rating: 4.5/5
Hey everyone!
Today I am reviewing a very interesting crime thriller that released earlier this month and available for you guys to buy a copy. Gone By Midnight by Candice Fox is the third book in her Queensland based series featuring ex-police detective Ted Conkaffey in the lead.
Ted is an ex-police man who was arrested wrongfully for the alleged rape and kidnap of a teenager, which spoiled his reputation to such an extent that he can no longer go out in public without being noticed as a paedophile. After a divorce with his ex-wife, he now lives by Crimson Lake with seven geese and a dog, Celine. ted may no longer be a suspect, as the charges against him are dropped but not entirely shut down, he still fears the day might come when the police arrest him again and drag him from his little home. Just when his ex-wife lets their daughter Lillian to stay with him for a few days, he is being called for the case of a 8 year old boy gone missing from the 5th floor of the White Caps Hotel. The boy’s mother, for some forsaken reason of her own, wants Ted to be on her side. Ted works with his weird, intelligent, tattooed colleague Amanda Pharrell who has her own past of being an ex-con. Their duo has been a success in the previous cases they handled together but their reputation attracts a whole different mass.
At home, one of his 7 geese fell sick just when Lillian comes to stay and he approaches the local Vet for treatment. Meanwhile, he requires ME Val to look after Lillian when he is away on the case. The police team is obviously not happy having Amanda around to find Richie the missing boy. Amanda however continues to stay the coolest, careless, sarcastic way possible. As the police teams and Ted duo search for the missing little boy, several twists and misleading clues delay the process. Will they be able to spot the kid before it’s too late?
This is my first book of Candice’s and I am instantly her fan. It took some time to know the characters better as they have a continuing history from the previous books in the series. SO it’s always the best if you start from the first book. I am very much looking forward to the next addition Candice writes as I can’t wait to read more about Amanda’s ruggedness and her brilliant attention to details. There is a crazy chemistry between her and little Lillian as she calls the child by weird names and gets allergic with the child’s aura.
I think the hidden context under this multi layered, story-within-story, crime thriller is the relationship between a parent and a child. Whether it is a Father-daughter or Mother-son relationship, the sensitivity in writing is written wonderfully that it makes you think how valuable are kids in a person’s life. They are life changing and makes one’s life complete.
Another Aussie Author I am adding to my list. Many many thanks to Sarah Harwood and Penguin Random House for my colourful looking proof.
Plot:
They came back to three.
__________________
On the fifth floor of the White Caps Hotel, four young boys are left alone while their parents dine downstairs.
But when one of the parents checks on the children at midnight, they discover one of them is missing.
The boys swear they stayed in their room. CCTV confirms that none of them left the building. No trace of the child is found.
Now the hunt is on to find him, before it’s too late – and before the search for a boy becomes a search for a body…
AmazonAuthor Bio:
Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney’s western suburbs composed of half-, adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.
As a cynical and trouble-making teenager, her crime and gothic fiction writing was an escape from the calamity of her home life. She was constantly in trouble for reading Anne Rice in church and scaring her friends with tales from Australia’s wealth of true crime writers.
Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy at age eighteen. At twenty, she turned her hand to academia, and taught high school through two undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees. Candice lectures in writing at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, while undertaking a PhD in literary censorship and terrorism.
Hades is her first novel, and she is currently working on its sequel.
She tweets @candicefoxbooks
