This is the first book by Candice fox I have read. her writing had me eagerly the pages.
The Blurb:
“On the fifth floor of the White Caps Hotel, four young friends are left alone while their parents dine downstairs. But when Sara Farrow checks on the children at midnight, her son is missing. The boys swear they stayed in their room, and CCTV confirms Richie has not left the building. Despite a thorough search, no trace of the child is found.
Distrustful of the police, Sara turns to Crimson Lake’s unlikeliest private investigators: disgraced cop Ted Conkaffey and convicted killer Amanda Pharrell. This case is just the sort of twisted puzzle that gets Amanda’s heart pumping.
For Ted, the case couldn’t have come at a worse time. Two years ago a false accusation robbed him of his career, his reputation and most importantly his family. But now Lillian, the daughter he barely knows, si coming to stay in his ramshackle cottage by the lake.
Ted must dredge up the area’s worst characters to find a missing boy. And the kind of danger he uncovers could well put his own child in deadly peril…”
What I liked:
I liked it all, thank you, Candice Fox.
Well, okay. I’ll be honest and tell you I was a little uneasy about certain aspects of the story. What do I mean by that? I hate the idea of anyone being wrongly persecuted. You know, once trouble always trouble, even if they were wrongly accused of being trouble in the first place. It makes me feel sick. And Ted is constantly in that situation. But that’s me and has nothing to do with Candice Fox’s writing.
The characters were well written. The ones you feel sorry for, the ones you want bad things to happen to because they’re arses, the ones you love, and the ones that make you cringe because well, they’re just so gutsy and a little bit crazy. I’m pointing at you Amanda Pharrell.
The story has everything you want in a crime novel. Awesome characters, mystery, red herrings, and subplots that have you gripping the edge of the book as you read it. I found Gone by Midnight INTENSE! I’d put the book down at tough spots and then pick it up again straight away because I needed to know what was happening next. If I put the book down because I needed to be somewhere else, I’d find myself going over and over the last scene in my head.
“Candice Fox’s writing is inventive, thrilling and totally addictive.”
James Patterson
The attention to detail Candice Fox puts into her book is astounding. The police interviews with the young boys, for example, are so typical of how a child would answer. There are other moments, such as a certain fight scene that, if I’d been watching it on the telly, I’d close my eyes.
And, I was very satisfied with the ending. That’s all I’ll say about that.
What I didn’t like:
There is nothing about this book I didn’t like.
Gone by Midnight is book 3 of the Crimson Lake series, but if you pick it up as the first book you’ve read in that series as I did, you don’t feel as though you’ve missed something. And as James Patterson said about Candice Fox’s writing, this book has thrills, is addictive and, in my own words, INTENSE!
5 stars.
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