Redemption Point by Candice Fox

Publisher's Synopsis

When former police detective Ted Conkaffey is wrongly accused of abducting a teenage girl, he hopes the Queensland rainforest town of Crimson Lake will be the perfect place to disappear.

But nowhere is safe from the girl's devastated father. Dale Bingley has a brutal revenge plan all worked out – and if Ted doesn’t help find the real abductor, he’ll be its first casualty.

Meanwhile, on the beer-soaked floor of a roadside shack, two young bartenders lie dead. As the homicide investigation unravels, Ted and his unlikely ally Amanda Pharrell are brought in to assist on the case.

While Ted fights to clear his own name, their hunt for the killer draws them into a violent dance with evil.

Redemption is certainly on the cards – but it may well cost them their lives . . .

My Review of Redemption Point by Candice Fox

The follow-up to Crimson Lake, Redemption Point carries on the story of wrongly accused former police detective Ted Conkaffey who has restarted his life in Far North Queensland. He now works with convicted murderer Amanda Pharrell as a private investigator, the pair making a very effective, if decidedly offbeat, sleuthing pair. If the first book in the series set a high standard then this one easily matches it.

Two main storylines run concurrently here to fully occupy the minds of both Amanda and Ted and to keep us thoroughly entertained.  

Ted is still trying to clear his name for a crime he didn’t commit. Although he was released from prison when it became clear there were problems with the case, he continues to live his life bearing the burden of an entire nation’s accusatory glares. He now has the opportunity to state his case in the media thanks to the opportunity to appear on a current affairs program.

Meanwhile, he and Amanda have been hired to help investigate the murder of a couple of bartenders at The Barking Frog. It appears the pair had both been shot in the head, execution-style. It’s a perplexing case, especially given the fact that the takings that were stolen amounted to only $1200.

Amanda Pharrell is as wonderfully weird as she ever was, wading into the new investigation with her ever-present gusto stepping on toes and making wildly inappropriate comments. But as usual, she quickly establishes that she’s got a brilliantly analytical mind that sees things that others miss.

This is a story that’s told from multiple viewpoints depending on which character is involved. It’s a first person narrative when Ted Conkaffey is the focus and when we follow either Amanda or Pip Sweeney it switches to a third person account. There is a third point of view and that’s the presumed attacker whose crime Ted was originally accused of and incarcerated for. In this case the story is told via a series of journal entries written by the (unnamed) man.

The obvious big drawcard for me is Amanda Pharrell. She’s bright, breezy, unfiltered, uncaring about societal norms and easily steals every scene she’s in. To top things off, she tends to bring out the best in the other characters around her and generally lifts the mood with random injections of inappropriateness that’s just delightful.

Balancing things out is the emotional turmoil experienced by Ted as he deals with the prospect of never getting out from under the pall cast by his original conviction. Glimmers of hope and, indeed, redemption flicker through at times only to be hampered by misguided help coming in from various quarters.

There is a great energy to Redemption Point thanks to the dual investigations in progress. I found my attention was whipped from one to the other as progress seemed to be made every step of the way. These types of fast-moving plots are always a winner when also combined with healthy doses of humour.

Redemption Point is a strong sequel to Crimson Lake, a well-crafted combination of a fast-paced murder mystery and an intense character study.