Fall – Candice Fox

(Reviewed by JD Jung)

“How to explain it all to him, a normal human man, someone with all his faculties, with a soul. How to explain that at the core of her being Eden killed people the way she breathed, the way she slept, that when she was hungry for blood it was as all-consuming as the need for sleep when exhausted, or the need for water to quench a thirst. Without the monsters that she hunted and caught and vanquished, she would suffocate. She ran on no other fuel. To decide not to kill was to decide to die.”

Detective Eden Archer has always feared that her partner, Frank Bennet, would discover her essence and her past but in some ways he has always known about this depravity on some level. The real problem is that Frank’s girlfriend, Imogen, a police psychologist, also suspects there’s something sinister about Eve; as does Hooky, a seventeen-year old girl who assists the police department in catching cyber-sex criminals. The latter two won’t stop until they find about Eden’s sordid past.

In the meantime crime goes on in Sydney and there’s a serial killer on the loose. She is coined the “Sydney Parks Strangler”; she kills attractive women jogging in the park.  Yes, I said “she” as our detectives figure out early on that the perp is probably a woman.

I have been impatiently waiting for this installment of Australian novelist Candice Fox’s “Archer and Bennett” series, and still I had no idea how breathtaking this would be!

Like the earlier books in the series, Eden and Hades, Fall is not for the faint of heart. It is just as gritty, dark, disturbing…and thrilling. You delve into the lives and psyches of these flawed characters, ones that refuse to be victims.

You can read Fall without reading the earlier novels. Fox slowly reveals the history of these characters throughout the book. You get what you need to know, and if you have read the others ( like I have), you don’t feel that you’re wasting your time. There’s no redundancy here. I bet though, that you will be enticed to read the others.

Fans of gritty character-driven crime novels, with a strong plot will enjoy Fall and the other two in the series. You won’t be able to put itthem down!