High Wire by Candice Fox

Title: High Wire

Author: Candice Fox

Genre: Crime Thriller

Publisher: Penguin Australia

Published: 24^th September 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 480

Price: $34.99

Synopsis: You only take the High Wire if you’re desperate – or up to no good.

A notorious unmarked track through outback Australia, the ‘Wire’ crosses slabs of lawless land, body-dumping grounds and mobile-phone blackspots.

Harvey Buck is certainly desperate. Racing to be with his dying girlfriend, he encounters Clare Holland, whose car has broken down. He offers the hapless traveller a ride . . . and then their nightmare begins.

The pair are ambushed by a vengeful crew – and strapped into bomb vests. As part of a deadly game, Harvey and Clare are forced to commit a series of increasingly murderous missions, or else be blown to smithereens.

Senior Sergeant Edna Norris is dealing with a runaway teenager; not an unusual job in a place where people go to disappear. But an unfolding crime spree turns this outback cop’s night into a fight for survival. Hot on Harvey and Clare’s trail, Edna finds a burnt-out car, a missing woman, a bank robbery and a bullet-riddled body.

And this road trip from hell has only just begun.

~*~

There’s a notorious unmarked track in the outback that people only take if they’re desperate – like Harvey Buck and Clare Holland. Harvey is racing to get to his dying girlfriend, hiding a past and secrets that he knows will one day come back to haunt him. And Clare is running from her own demons, eager to make her way to town for something. They’re two people on seemingly innocuous missions to get to the places they need to go. Until they run into Tizza, Parker, and Darryl – who know Harvey from years ago. They’re a vengeful crew, hellbent on creating havoc and a nightmare for their captives. Harvey and Clare have meticulously made bomb vests strapped to them, and once they’re drawn into the crew’s deadly game, they learn they only have two options: commit a series of murderous missions or be blown up.

At the same time, Senior Sergeant Edna Norris has to deal with a runaway teenager when she’s called upon to look into the strange crimes happening in Innamincka. She reluctantly takes the teen, Talon along. But this is no ordinary case on the High Wire – there’s bodies, burnt out cars, a bank robbery and a missing woman. It sounds unrelated and coincidental, but there are never any coincidences in crime thrillers like this. Everything is important, it seems. Clues or images that some people don’t notice are vitally important, and threaded throughout as a way for the characters to communicate in an area where phones aren’t always reliable, and where you don’t know who you can trust. Candice Fox’s  latest novel is set in the outback, a notorious place that is said to swallow up bodies and people. It’s a place where people can and do disappear. It serves as an eerie backdrop to the story, and heightens the tension within the characters, all of whom have questionable reasons for being out there. It’s not a place many people linger, so there’s the ever-present why that permeates the narrative.

This is a world tinged with crime, where even the characters who are supposed to be good come across as questionable. It’s never clear why though, because they cleverly hide their motives as you would in any good crime novel. As readers, we believe what they tell us at first, and then, things slowly unravel. They’re bound to on the High Wire and in a race against time to not be blown up. The short, sharp chapters that alternate between Harvey and Clare, and Edna and Talon, the runaway teen with his own reasons for not wanting to leave keep the tensions high. This alternation is combined with cliffhanger endings to the chapters that keep the stakes high. It kept me reading to find out what happened to the characters. It’s easy to become invested in these characters and their secrets that are drip-fed to the reader throughout the book. It’s a puzzle that you have to piece together with tiny pieces of information and connections that at first, seem innocuous. Or even out of place. There’s a lot of overarching why questions in this novel, and they’re may only be answered if the characters are willing to impart that knowledge.

High Wire’s setting is as much a character as the humans that populate it. The outback creates tension between people and devastates families and relationships. It is marred by the death in this book. And it allows characters you’d think would be moral and good to act unreliably, and completely change how we see them. The desperation of Harvey and Clare is evident from the first time we meet them. They’re two people on their own missions whose lives will forever be changed after the events of this book. The tension and thrills that keep you reading, and your heart pounding are what make this book work.

Bringing everything together slowly and in short, sharp punches is a key element of successful crime fiction. It is what keeps it interesting and ensures that the rising tension springs off the page. In a life and death game in the outback, all you can do is try to survive. Survival in the circumstances Harvey, Clare and Edna find themselves in can be tough, and they have to do whatever they can to survive and get through the crime spree they’re involved in. Running from the law, running from the villains – it’s all here. The complexities of Harvey, Clare and Edna is a testament to the different ways people respond to trauma, tragedy and being thrust into helpless situations. There’s a certainty of death throughout this novel, with a lingering question of who will die and just how high the body count will be by the end of it all.

This is the road trip from hell – one that nobody ever wants to go on. But Harvey, Clare and Edna must if they are to survive and find out what is really going on. The shadows and secrecy create a world where as a reader, you’re never sure who to trust. Never sure what is really going on. Trust is a key theme running through this book, and it keeps us on our toes as readers, and even once finished, I still had some lingering questions, but was overall satisfied with the ending that pulled it all together after such excitement getting through it all. Another fabulous Candice Fox novel!