High wire by Candice Fox

Get set for the ride of your life with Candice Fox’s latest thriller! Set in the desolate Australian outback, on an isolated drug-runners’ road, the High Wire, the book is full of exciting chases, murder, kidnapping, bomb threats and drug runners. Harvey Buck is trying to get to Sydney to be with his dying girlfriend, when he stops to help Clare Holland, whose car has been burnt out. From then on, the action does not stop. The pair are grabbed by three men, strapped into bomb vests and ordered to do unspeakable things. Meanwhile Senior Sergeant Edna is going about her business, dealing with a runaway teenager, Talon, who has appeared believing that he is meeting a girlfriend. The pair go on the trail of Harvey and Clare and encounter threats to their lives and the possibility that Edna will lose her job.

Fox cleverly mixes up the narrative, going from Harvey and Clare’s desperate situation, back to 2011 Afghanistan when Harvey was a soldier, as well as giving the reader an insight into the minds of Edna and Talon. I became invested in the well-being of the main characters as well as the people that Harvey is forced to threaten. Most short chapters end on a cliff-hanger which ensures that the reader must keep reading to see what is going to happen next – I finished the book in two sittings!

High Wire is a book for fans of thrillers that move at breathless speed. The writing is so vivid that each desperate and violent adventure is easy to picture and I can see it being made into a movie or TV series. I certainly look forward to the next book that Fox writes.

Themes: Thriller, Revenge, Murder, Deception. Outback Australia, Police.

Pat Pledger