Author(s): Candice Fox

Crime

'One of Australia's finest new gen crime writers.' Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

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.

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.

Finding Tilly is now 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 . . .

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: SIMON

Hot on the heels of “The Chase” (‘her most ambitious and byzantine novel’), Candice Fox returns with another cinematic blockbuster loaded with nail-biting suspense, bountiful twists, and a crackling narrative style. It’s the kind of thriller you can’t stop reading, but don’t want to end: you’ll enjoy the ride so damn much. 

Fox opens “Fire With Fire” with the pedal to the metal, and the momentum doesn’t let up. This book doesn’t just move, it gallops. It borrows some conventional thriller tropes — the maligned rookie officer; the hard-as-nails undercover cop; a desperate mother and father — and jacks them up to the extreme. 

Ryan and Elsie Delaney are at the center of the plot. Two years ago, their youngest daughter drowned on Santa Monica beach. At least, that’s the official police line, after an investigation the Delaney’s consider insultingly perfunctory, during which Tilly’s body was never found. They want the  case reopened, and having had their pleas rejected, they’ve taken matters into their own hands — by storming the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Centre, taking hostages, and threatening to destroy evidence in major cases unless Tilly is found. 

Detective Charlie Hoskins spent five years undercover with the Death Machines, barely survived, and all the evidence he accumulated is in that lab. Partnered with Lynette Lamb, the rookie cop who inadvertently helped break his cover (and almost cost him his life), Hoskins goes rogue, and starts digging deeper into Tilly’s disappearance. But the clock is ticking. 

“Fire With Fire” is a pulse-pounding pressure-cooker of a crime thriller. I love this new trajectory Fox’s storytelling has taken: much as I adored her dark, mesmeric early thrillers, she has reached a whole new level between this and “The Chase.” They are genuine blockbusters that marry her incorrigible style with plenty of substance.