A married couple launch a deadly plan to find their missing child.
A half-dead man washes up on a Los Angeles beach.
A rookie cop is fired on her first day.
Candice Fox has already made a name for herself as one of Australia’s most brilliant crime writers. She has three Ned Kelly Awards under her belt, and her co-authored collaborations with James Patterson have all been instant international bestsellers. In Fire With Fire, Fox does it again, and then some, well and truly cementing her star status. I imagine the adaptation bids are already flooding her agent’s inbox.
Fox’s latest heart-pounding thriller throws us into the chaos that ensues when a couple holds the LAPD to ransom in a desperate attempt to find their missing daughter.
Ryan and Elsie Delaney don’t accept the official line that their young daughter drowned on Santa Monica beach. Her body has never been found and their pleas for a proper investigation are rejected. So now the desperate pair are raining hellfire on the police.
Taking three hostages at the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, they give law enforcement an ultimatum: if Tilly isn’t located in the next 24 hours, they will destroy evidence in several major cases.
Detective Charlie Hoskins only just survived five years embedded with the ruthless gang known as the Death Machines. All his work is in that lab. If the police won’t look for Tilly, he will. Even if that means accepting help from Lynette Lamb, the rookie officer sacked for blowing his cover – and having him thrown to the sharks.
Talk about high stakes; from the very first page of Fire With Fire, we’re launched into a complicated web of interconnected do-or-die scenarios that each character has no choice but to navigate. Every character has everything to lose, whether it’s their career, family, reputation, or their very survival…
Finding Tilly becomes a matter of life and death – for the Delaneys, for their hostages, for Charlie and Lamb, and for the little girl who one day simply vanished.
Fox doesn’t miss a beat. The dialogue is whip-smart. The LA setting is sexy and gritty. The car chases and the threat of gunshots will have you on the edge of your seat.
The characters are all rendered in fabulously convincing three-dimensionality. Their actions – and their infuriating missteps – are utterly believable. While the dual suspense of the hostage situation and the cold-case mystery would be enough to make this a compelling plot on their own, it’s the added layer of the characters’ frictions and competing desires that really keeps the pages turning at breakneck speed. The question mark of self-interest vs morality hovers over every choice, catapulting this novel miles ahead of your run-of-the-mill crime thriller.
Clear your schedule before you start Fire With Fire – with a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter, you’ll be hard-pressed to pause for air (or food or water) until you reach the end.
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