Fire With Fire by Candice Fox

Publisher's Synopsis

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 . . .

My Review of Fire With Fire

Fire With Fire is a highly unorthodox police thriller set in Los Angeles that immediately grabs your attention and then places layers of intrigue on top of full blooded action to create a compelling drama from start to finish. 

When parents of a missing 5 year old girl are completely dissatisfied with the efforts of the LAPD in looking for their daughter they take over a forensics lab, holding 3 people hostage. The lab happens to be used by the LAPD to process DNA tests on evidence collected in important cases. The couple threaten to destroy one piece of evidence for every 2 hours their daughter remains missing. Effectively, they’re potentially holding every outstanding police case involving DNA evidence hostage.

Meanwhile, Detective Charlie Hoskins is in the process of recovering from working undercover after his cover was blown in spectacular style. He’s got evidence tied up in that lab and decides that he’s going to work the missing girl case himself - off the books, so to speak. In a very strange situation, the person he works the case with is the very person who inadvertently blew his cover, Lynette Lamb. Lamb had earlier suffered the ignominy of being fired from the LAPD on her first day on the job.

Together, Hoskins and Lamb form a fascinating partnership as they work through what appears to be a challenging cold case. Lamb displays a great flair for deductive reasoning, time and again proving that she has great powers of observation that translate into insightful conclusions. Hoskins is more your brute force type of detective who, with years of experience behind him, knows how to direct an investigation to make the greatest progress. 

What works very well is the heightened tension created by the pressure of time constraints on two fronts. On one hand is the evidence being destroyed by the hostage takers in the lab at an increasingly rapid rate. On the other is a cold case investigation that feels as though is being performed in fast-forward. To make things even more interesting, the biker gang that Hoskins had infiltrated whilst undercover is on his trail, bent on retribution.

Where this really works for me is the depth given to each of the main characters. We’re given just enough of a background of each to help us understand their motives, their drives and their weaknesses without distracting or robbing the momentum from the plot.

There is great frenetic energy surrounding the entire story and Candice Fox works wonders in holding it all together. The static site of the hostage situation is a powder keg just waiting for a spark to set it off while the more dynamic investigation run by Lamb and Hoskins is a breathless race against time. By running both locations over the top of each other, switching from one to the other in alternate chapters the high pace is maintained throughout.

Some cold case investigations can be long drawn out slogs as old evidence is pawed over and rechecked carefully. This is a cold case investigation on steroids.

Altogether, Fire With Fire is a fully entertaining ride that kept me completely engaged from first page to last. I strongly recommend this to anyone who loves a fast-paced, hectic thriller packed with numerous high points and boasting one of the more unusual pairings I've come across.