Redemption Point

October 15, 2018

Wrongly accused of abducting Claire Bingley, former police detective Ted Conkaffey is protecting himself from Claire's murderous father by hiding out in an Australian rainforest town and trying to find the real culprit. He also joins forces with Amanda Pharrell, a private detective who's done time, to investigate the killing of two local bartenders. Just the way Ned Kelly Award-winning Fox joins forces with James Patterson now and again.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2019
Ted Conkaffey believes he's still the most hated man in Australia. The former Sydney cop, now a PI, was unjustly accused of kidnapping, raping, and strangling 13-year-old Claire Bingley and served eight months in prison before being released (as described in Crimson Lake, 2018). Claire's grieving father, Dale, comes gunning for him. Conkaffey and his partner, Amanda Pharrell, have just been hired by the father of one of two young bartenders murdered at the Barking Frog Inn. In addition to working the case, Conkaffey fends off Bingley, appears on a Sydney TV program where the interviewer disarms him with false accusations, and tries to make the most of an emotional meeting with his now two-year-old daughter. Entries from the diary of Claire Bingley's actual attacker are interspersed, heightening the mystery of whether this pedophile will be identified and receive justice. Meanwhile, newly promoted Detective Inspector Philippa Pip Sweeney, heading the bartenders' murder case, feels out of her depth until she establishes rapport with the quirky Pharrell, a petite pixie of a woman adorned with tattoos, who's a convicted murderer with a sharp tongue and even sharper intuition. Fox, formerly one of James Patterson's coauthors, builds tension and suffuses it with humanity in this compelling sequel, featuring a pair of protagonists readers will take to their hearts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)