This was an interesting read with an interesting hypothesis. I did find the characters a bit shallow and a lot of detail detracted from the storyline. Not my favourite.

I LOVE this series! When I got the chance to read GONE BY MIDNIGHT didn't I hesitate, I had to read it straight away. And WOW! The first book was great, the second was fabulous, this one is awesome!

READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION: http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=67881

A superb, pacy, thriller-cum-procedural which will entice you to turn page after page.

Although this is the third book in the "Crimson Lake" series, the fact that I had not read the previous books did not seem to matter. Packed full of description, the unlikely, and at times, far-fetched scenarios which would, in less adept hands be the downfall for an author, are held together through the use of pace and twists that hold the reader's attention. This pace also allows the reader to forgive the feeling that the tale is, perhaps, a little predictable - the mark of a great writer.

If there was a criticism, for me it would be the couple of chapters that follow the ending of the main storyline. Used to bring together a few of the side stories, they felt a little too contrived and, I think, took away some of the power of that which had gone before. Perhaps as part of the series they would have seemed more appropriate, but read as a stand-alone they came across as a little twee.

I certainly intend to read the preceding books as I really enjoyed the style of writing and would heartily recommend this book, particularly to those who enjoy the likes of James Patterson or Patricia Cornwell.

With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this book. Great story & characters that kept me engaged. I would recommend to friends.

I enjoyed this book. I didn’t realise at first it was part of a series. It made no difference though to the enjoyment as the characters were well described and developed.
There were a few parts that were at times a tiny bit unnecessary and tedious to read but as the book progressed it became very exciting to read.
Thank you NetGalley!

A truly Awesome and interesting tale that thrilled from beginning to the end. Loved it all. A definite must read.

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...

WOW What a roller-coaster ride of a book. I devoured this book in a day, I couldn't put it down, I wanted to know what happened to the boy but more so I wanted to know more about the Private Investigators covering the case. All the characters were believable and likeable, even the villainous ones. The ending was superb too. A little predicable but great all the same. You'll love it!

My favourite private investigator's’ team up again

The next chapter in the lives of Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell begins with the disappearance of a young boy from a hotel room. He and his friends were confined to the room whilst their parents had a late dinner at the restaurant joining the hotel and although one of the adults checked the kids every hour, on the hour, by midnight one of them had vanished.

Ted is called in to investigate the case by the mother of the missing boy, Richie Farrow, and from the start, Ted is not convinced that Sara Farrow is telling him the whole story. However, as he himself was falsely accused of the abduction and rape of a teenager, he decides to put his gut feelings aside and attempt to solve the case. He has never been acquitted or declared not guilty, he has had to contend with the charges being dropped due to lack of evidence but the stigma still haunts him and the locals treat him with disdain and suspicion. The case drags up the past and his home life is further complicated by a visit from his 3-year-old daughter. Lillian has never stayed overnight and Ted has never had an unsupervised visit up until now. He is conflicted, does he devote his time to his own child, or help another distraught set of parents find their missing child.

His sidekick Amanda is a great character, she marches to her own beat and does not conform in any way to the norms of society. I really adore her character and she makes me laugh out loud with her witty one-liners. She is fiercely loyal to Ted and the two, although an odd couple, seem to get to the heart of any case thrown their way. They have a deep love for animals and find solace in their pets. Humans have deeply wounded them both and this shared experience bonds them even more closely.

This time around there is a hint of romance in the air for Ted when he takes one of his beloved geese to the new vet. Laney Bass is new to the area so she has no idea of Ted’s background and he neglects to tell her off the bat, hoping against hope that he will find a way to explain his past before it blows up in his face.

On top of all this, the local police force is determined to make life as difficult as possible for both Ted and Amanda and this leads to all manner of turmoil and conflict.

With time running out to find Richie, they have to work against all the odds to solve the case.

A great read, as always

Gillian

Breakway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

The Crimson Lake series just gets better and better. The odd partnership between Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell works well adding new dimensions to the regular detective stories. This time the pair are investigating the disappearance of a young boy from his hotel bedroom whilst Ted gets to grips with the first stay over visit form his daughter Lillian. You will be gripped from the start by this thriller wondering what will happen next and to whom. Candice Fox has a very easy writing style and develops the plot in such a way it is difficult to put down until complete. Don't think you have it all worked out because this book is action and thrills the whole way. Excellent.

This series just gets better and better. I love the fact that we're getting to know the main protagonists better. Ted has technically been cleared but that makes no difference to the pall of suspicion that he had to deal with daily. Amanda is as enigmatic as ever. This title differs slightly as the duo are slightly more accepted the the police and it makes the story flow better. The case is something of a locked room mystery and really gripping.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for this arc in exchange for an honest review.
It seems to have taken me longer than normal to read this book, although I'm not sure why.
The synopsis intrigued me and the storyline was exciting. There was a lot going on beside the main thread. I didn't know this was the third book in a series until I sat down to write my review, and I didn't feel that I must have missed some vital information whilst reading..
My least favourite part of this book was the ending. Not the ending, in regards as what happened to Richie, but the ending after that. As there were several threads running through the story they all needed to come to a conclusion. Once I'd found out Richie's outcome, my interest dwindled and I just wanted to get to the end. This feeling could possibly have been overcome if I'd have read the previous books, as those storylines may have held more excitement for me. However now I know, I would be interested to read Ted and Amanda's history before the events in this book took place.

I started this book this morning and could not put it down! I just had to find out what happened to Richie.

I didn't realise this was book three in a series so I hadn't come across Ted and Amanda before, not that it mattered as this was easily read as a stand alone - though I do need more background on them both so will be heading to Amazon to get the previous books asap!!

Ted has a tainted history of being wrongly accused of being a paedophil, so when he gets called in to work a case to help find a missing child along with his partner Amanda, things don't get off to an easy start.
The Cairns Police dept don't take to kindly to him being brought on board but he was requested but the missing boy's mother. And Amanda is hated by the officers after one of their own died whilst helping her on a case. And they cant let those facts go for either of them.

I instantly loved both Ted and Amanda,

When a group of parents go out for dinner in the hotel that they are staying in, they leave their children all together in one hotel room with movies, food and fun to keep them busy. There is no way that they can leave the room and the parents will all pop back to double check on their offspring throughout the evening. Honestly, have parents learned NOTHING from media coverage of similar cases involved children left alone?! So it’s no surprise (well, not to us as the readers!) when one of the mums checks the sleeping group of boys and realises that her son is missing. But this missing person enquiry takes on a different direction when a notorious local is brought in to help investigate at the request of the mother.

Yet again I read this book in one go - once I was caught up in the drama of this missing child, I couldn’t rest until I found out what had happened to him. And the plot didn’t develop in quite the way that I was expecting either! The quality of the plotting was quite brilliant which, alongside the wonderfully crafted characters, made this book one to remember. I will definitely be reading more books by Candice Fox in the future if this is the standard I can expect from them. Consider me a fan!

In a room in a Queensland hotel, four young boys are left to watch TV while their parents spend time together downstairs, one of them checking on the boys hourly, but at the midnight check one of the boys is missing. The police start the investigation in the hope of finding the boy rather than a body, but the boy’s mother enlists the help of private investigators Ted and Amanda. Amanda is an ex-con and Ted himself has a past history of being accused of killing a young girl, and, although he was acquitted and was innocent of the crime, he cannot escape the story and is a pariah in his community.

This was a superb thriller with rich characterisation and back-stories to the protagonists that were presented with skill, allowing both people like me – new to the series and not having read the first two books – having no problem at all with the thread, and yet not labouring over old ground for those who might have read the previous books. However, this was good enough to make me want to go back and read those stories as I know from this experience that they will be great stories with excellent writing. There’s just enough about Ted and Amanda’s personal lives to maintain genuine interest in their personal stories just as much as the search for the missing boy and the trails and inevitable false leads along the way.

A superb thriller, great story, great characterisation, quality writing … I can’t wait to read more Candice Fox!

I have not read any books by this author previously but I understand it a series featuring the main detective and his partner. I think that was a slight downside as it means that it will be difficult to read previous books and feel surprised. However, I did enjoy the plot of this book, and enjoyed the partnership of the two main characters.

I can’t believe that I have never read any Candice Fox books before! This was amazing! It’s the 3rd in the series but covers the backstory so well that it doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the earlier books. In fact I have already sourced them and plan to read them ASAP. These flawed main characters are perfectly believable and as the crime is discovered and ultimately solved I found myself cheering them on. I can’t wait to read more.

This is the third book in the series and the second I’ve read.
I enjoyed it as much as the first. Ted and Amanda are very engaging characters and there is a humour running through both books despite the dark subject matter. The pair are called in, by the local police chief, to help in the investigation of a missing boy. The race to find him is hampered by both their pasts and the dislike and suspicion of the police.
If you haven’t read the previous two books it doesn’t really matter as the author gives enough of the back story but I think you’d get more out of the book if you did.
I agree that the story stretches credibility at times but that didn’t spoil it for me. I love the setting, the main characters and the storylines. I hope there are more.
My thanks to Netgalley for this copy.

The best thriller series at the moment!
So many thrillers nowadays are so very similar to each other, but this author manages to make her work very different to the others. Again, many recent thrillers seem to be about abducted children, an idea which I feel has become overused. However, this book is about an abducted child, but is absolutely brilliant!
I think that one of the things that make this series so great is that a lot of the action is not about the case on which they are working, so we find out more about Amanda, Ted's ex-wife, his child, and more about the geese. Poor Peeper! I do love those geese.
This is a truly great series, and I do recommend it to you. I also advise reading the books in order, although it is not necessary to do so.

The third book in the Crimson Lake series, which reads well as a standalone book, features the hunt for a missing child.

Ted, a former detective with a nightmare past, and his partner Amanda are the only ones likely to find the answers but everything is a constant battle, as they face conflict both internal and external before they can solve the mystery.

Ted and Amanda are clever and haunted, you empathise with them because of the past and continuing injustice the endured. It is their current mindset that makes them willing to take risks to get to the truth. Both their personal lives seem more optimistic at the end of this book, but you’re left wondering whether they can ever rebuild their emotional lives.

An atmospheric plot and setting are intrinsic to this intense crime, mystery thriller. It’s like working out a route in a maze. How did the boy disappear? Has he run away or been abducted? If so, who took him? Is he still alive? The plot unwinds with multiple possible outcomes and a multitude of probable suspects. The final twist is exciting and menacing with a surprising ending, worthy of this well- thought out story.

I received an electronic advanced reading copy from Random House UK Cornerstone- Century via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was an incredible read, and despite it appearing to be a very early galley copy in that every paragraph or part paragraph was repeated in broken down parts, 2, 3 or even 4 times, eventually leaving you with a final acceptable one that I guess the author and the publisher were happy with. So you had a lot more hard work to get through all these constant repeats, on every page, but it had to be done to continue with the story. So this is where the brilliance of the story comes through, that despite the copy being all over the place, and you got lost with not knowing who's dialogue it was or how an odd sentence repeated and repeated, belonged to any part of that particular scene or even who was speaking those words.. I could do nothing but keep going as I totally love it. Ted was a wonderful character, I could picture him exactly, adorned with long, curly hair, inherited by his gorgeous three year old daughter, Lillian, who really was the epitome of a three year old, I have one of those myself and she was spot on. I visualised her playing with the geese underneath the hose pipe spray so vividly. The end was a perfect denouement, I never saw that coming. What we need here is a follow up with the same characters then I'd be happy. I loved this book from beginning to end. I started loving Ted when he took Peeper to the vet, you could feel his emotion and love for the goose, and the characterisation of Celine, his devoted dog was perfect. More please.