Top cop, devoted sister, and now Inmate 3329: even prison bars won’t stop Harriet Blue from seeking justice for the murder of her brother.

Prison is a dangerous place for a former cop — as Harriet Blue is learning on a daily basis.

So, following a fight for her life and a prison-wide lockdown, the last person she wants to see is Deputy Police Commissioner Joe Woods. The man who put her inside.

But Woods is not there to gloat. His daughter Tonya and her two-year-old child have gone missing.

He’s ready to offer Harriet a deal: find his family to buy her freedom . . .

My Review

This is book four in the series and another cracking story. Harriet Blue is in prison. She broke every rule in the police handbook, going rogue and then killing the man she was chasing. The only man who could prove her brother’s innocence.

Prison is very tough for a cop – even a suspended one who rid the country of a serial killer who targeted young women. It seems everyone is corrupt, even some of the guards. Apart from Dr Goldman who has become Harriet’s friend.

I’m not going to go into the plot in detail as there are a number of main threads and it’s all a bit complicated. Harriet, Whit and Tox Barnes have been teamed up, Harriet having been released from prison by her nemesis Deputy Police Commissioner Joe Woods. His daughter and granddaughter are missing and he wants them to find her Harriet has nowhere to live so she moves in with her mentor ‘Pops’ and his three fluffy foster dogs. Whit and Tox are technically suspended but also brought in to help.

So we have a missing woman and her daughter. How is one of the country’s richest lawyers linked to them? Then we have a biker gang and bodies buried in the desert. And who murdered the lovely doctor? Are they connected and how far will our fearsome trio go to pull it altogether?

Unfortunately they changed the narrator – which was a bit of a disappointment but I did get used to her in the end. The last in the series – please write another one. I want to know what happens to Harriet, Whit and Tox.

About the Authors

Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney’s western suburbs composed of half-adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.

As a cynical and trouble-making teenager, her crime and gothic fiction writing was an escape from the calamity of her home life. She was constantly in trouble for reading Anne Rice in church and scaring her friends with tales from Australia’s wealth of true crime writers.

Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy at age eighteen. At twenty, she turned her hand to academia, and taught high school through two undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees. Candice lectures in writing at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, while undertaking a PhD in literary censorship and terrorism.

James Patterson is the most popular storyteller of our time and the creator of such unforgettable characters and series as Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Smith, and Maximum Ride. He has coauthored #1 bestselling novels with Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, and Michael Crichton, as well as collaborated on #1 bestselling nonfiction, including The Idaho Four, Walk in My Combat Boots, and Filthy Rich. Patterson has told the story of his own life in the #1 bestselling autobiography James Patterson by James Patterson. He is the recipient of an Edgar Award, ten Emmy Awards, the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, and the National Humanities Medal.