Crimson Lake by Candice Fox: book review

Crimson Lake by Candice Fox (2017) is set in Queensland, Australia, in contemporary times. The narrator is Edward (Ted) Conkaffey, a former detective accused of the abduction of a young girl, Claire Bingley, at a bus stop. He was found not guilty in court and is free, but his reputation is in tatters. The whole of Australia knows about the case and Ted, but no one is sympathetic.

Ted wants to go somewhere quiet, where he will be relatively unknown. He goes to Crimson Lake – tropical, crocodile country. ‘Crimson Lake and the houses that bordered it were hideaway hollows for people who wanted to live alone.’

His lawyer Sean introduces him to Amanda Pharrell, who owns a private investigations agency in Crimson Lake. The problem is: she is a convicted murderer.

Ted Conkaffey helps Amanda with the Jake Scully case. As he does, he contemplates the failure of his marriage to Kelly, the application for custody of his daughter Lillian, and the likelihood of Amanda being innocent, before realizing that he is in Crimson Lake to be alone. Besides, he hears that Amanda is weird and a freak.

Amanda is trying to find the truth about Ted too – did he really abduct Claire Bingley? A Ted support group had formed who defended him against negative press. If Ted and the Ted support group cleared his name completely, there would be no reason for him to stay in Crimson Lake. She pondered that idea.

Eventually, the truth about both Amanda and Ted is revealed.

The story is interesting enough, as a crime thriller involving two detectives who don’t trust each other, to be a page-turner and an Australian best-seller.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009). She lives in Paris.

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