Redemption Point

This second book in the Ted Conkaffey series clearly demonstrates why Candice Fox has won two Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing. 

Following on from Crimson Lake, Redemption Point is dark, dry, funny, cleverly plotted and populated by wonderfully real, often eccentric characters. If you haven’t caught up with this series yet, Ted Conkaffey is an ex-cop accused of the violent abduction and assault of a young girl, yet never charged, never tried. His life and his marriage have fallen apart, and he’s run to the far north of Queensland to hide out and try to get his life, and his head, back together. On arrival he meets up with Amanda Pharrell, a local private detective with brutality in her own past that has resulted in a morbid fear of vehicles and … let’s just call it an eccentric personality in spades.

These two form a tentative friendship and working partnership in the first novel, Conkaffey taking on the care of a family of geese at his ramshackle rented home, and he and Pharrell starting to carve out a business as local private detectives and gaining some acceptance as the community’s resident nutters. Danger lurks everywhere though – even just beyond Conkaffey’s back fence:

I looked for crocodiles every day, drawn to the bottom of my isolated property on Crimson Lake by the recollection of being one of them. Ted Conkaffey; the beast. The hunter. The monster in hiding from whom the world needed to be protected.

There isn’t a day in Conkaffey’s life when he doesn’t think about Claire, the 13-year-old girl he was accused of abducting. He knows he didn’t do it, but that view is not shared by many other people, least of all Claire’s father Dale, who has been plotting his own revenge. Finding the real abductor has always been on Conkaffey’s priority list, but Dale Bingley’s grief, and his plan, have upped the stakes considerably.

Meanwhile Amanda Pharrell’s arrived on the scene of a brutal murder at the local Barking Frog Inn to ‘assist’ DI Pip Sweeney’s first homicide investigation. The death of two young bartenders is obviously murder – but is it a robbery gone wrong? A targeted attack? Or were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time? From here on things are going to get complicated. Sweeney is heading this homicide investigation because of things from Pharrell’s past that were revealed in the first novel. But Sweeney’s cop colleagues aren’t prepared to cut Pharrell any slack and there’s even some resentment there. There are also complications with Sweeney’s feelings for Conkaffey:

She turned and pulled her hood on. I did the same, gave Amanda a quizzical frown. Sweeney’s attitude was far beyond what I had expected. I’d expected to be turned on my heel and shoved right back out the door, but instead I found myself following Sweeney to the edge of the bar area where the crowd was thicker and a photographer’s flash was bouncing off the walls. Sweeney was letting us in, but she clearly didn’t trust me.

However, there is absolutely no doubt about her issues with Pharrell:

Sweeney was indebted to Amanda now for her job, but she couldn’t say so. Nothing Amanda had gone through had been worth her new stripes, her pay upgrade.

As with all Candice Fox’s books, there’s nothing straightforward about the cases investigated, the timelines employed or the characterisations built. Everybody here is damaged but getting on with it. As Conkaffey is pulled this way and that between the threat from Dale Bingley, the car crash that his marriage and personal relationships have become, and the local murder, he’s distracted and in and out of frame. Pharrell is more able to dedicate attention to the details of the murder of the two bartenders, and as a result get herself into some tight spots. As is increasingly the case with these two central characters, their support and understanding of each other means they are each there for their friend, as long as they don’t mind an occasional bit of last-minute kerfuffle. The bonus here is that Conkaffey’s distraction allows for a closer understanding to build between a reluctant Sweeney and the slightly dippy, laissez-faire Pharrell.

While Fox has provided a reasonable amount of background in this novel, it would be better for readers to have read the earlier book – Crimson Lake – to fully appreciate the setup, background and relationships between these characters:

‘Have you ever thought about training yourself to get back into a car?’ she asked, drawing her bike closer. Ted had told Sweeney about Amanda’s refusal to ever travel in cars. He’d warned her against trying to trick or coerce Amanda into one, saying only that it was a bad idea.

Interspersed with all of the current action is a series of ‘Dear Diary’ entries. Just whose diary this is becomes evident fairly quickly, but the implications aren’t so obvious, nor are the connections that are building between this wonderful cast of misfits — or what will ultimately happen to all of them:

Amanda didn’t need them to tell her what had happened. She knew from the house around her, could see the story in their eyes. She lay on the floor and watched it happening in her mind, almost like a film, the minutes ticking by and the house darkening behind her eyelids.

This novel is a combination of clever, off-the-wall characterisations, good and complex plotting, and a great sense of place. There’s always an ‘other world’ aspect to Fox’s settings – here it’s the tropical north with its weird, sometimes menacing fauna, and a hot, damp climate that sets off the hot actions and dampened lives of those within it.

If you become lulled into thinking that these characters are going to sort their lives out, get their acts together and live happily ever after, never for a moment doubt the determination of this author to upset the reader’s apple cart, and then pitch the apples straight back at you.