Former detective Ted Conkaffey was accused, but never actually convicted, of a brutal attack on a 13-year-old girl. His arrest and a drawn-out but inconclusive trial are enough to destroy his life: he loses his family, career and good name and goes on the run, winding up in a broken-down house on the banks of crocodile-infested Crimson Lake in hot and steamy Queensland. Ted stubbornly holes up in his house with a flock of geese and his bad memories, hoping against hope that the vigilantes who keep vandalising his house will just go away. His lawyer, for undisclosed reasons, persuades him to start working with Amanda Pharrell, a convicted murderer and genuine eccentric turned private detective.

Ted and Amanda begin an investigation into the suspicious disappearance of a celebrity author with a rabid fan base. The two negotiate their way around each other and their case. While Ted begins his own investigation, trying to figure out if Amanda really is guilty and remaining two steps ahead of the press, the vigilantes and two local cops have it in for him. Just what else Amanda is up to is not clear, and it’s hard to figure out if she really could be a cold-blooded killer.

Crimson Lake is a massive improvement on Fall, the last Candice Fox book that I read, which was heavy-handed and lacking in any sense of place or time. While one could hardly call Crimson Lake a literary classic, it is well paced and has a definite sense of place under the sweltering Queensland sun, and its flawed characters are oddly endearing. This looks like the start of a series, and it will be interesting to see if Fox can maintain the light touch she displays here.