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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'12.46: Thirteen-year-old Claire Bingley stands alone at a bus stop
12.47: Ted Conkaffey parks his car beside her
12.52: The girl is missing . . .
'Six minutes – that’s all it took to ruin Detective Ted Conkaffey’s life. Accused but not convicted of Claire’s abduction, he escapes north, to the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake.
'Amanda Pharrell knows what it’s like to be public enemy number one. Maybe it’s her murderous past that makes her so good as a private investigator, tracking lost souls in the wilderness. Her latest target, missing author Jake Scully, has a life more shrouded in secrets than her own – so she enlists help from the one person in town more hated than she is: Ted Conkaffey.
'But the residents of Crimson Lake are watching the pair’s every move. And for Ted, a man already at breaking point, this town is offering no place to hide . . .' (Publication summary)
Adaptations
-
form
y
Troppo
( dir. Yolanda Ramke
et. al. )agent
Australia
:
EQ Media Production
Troppo Productions
,
2022
23849070
2022
series - publisher
film/TV
crime
'When an ex-cop falsely accused of a disturbing crime escapes to the tropics of Far North Queensland, he finds himself entangled in a newly-formed PI agency run by an eccentric ex-con who served ten years for murder. By-the-book Ted Conkaffey and human whirlwind Amanda Pharrell mix like oil and water, and yet, as they set about unravelling the truth behind the strange death of a local inhabitant, a partnership which seemed doom from the outset slowly begins to take on another dimension - and in the process, both wayward souls are offered a chance at redemption.'
Source: Screen Australia.
Notes
-
Dedication: For Gaby and Bev.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
- Braille.
Works about this Work
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Quirky Sleuths, Slippery Quarry
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 11 February 2017; (p. 18) 'Cairns and its region are still tourist drawcards, although it’s now ‘‘a mature destination’’, in the anxious phrase of operators seeking to rebrand the sights. Artists have called more often than novelists, among them Ian Fairweather, Donald Friend and Ray Crooke. Now far north Queensland has found an ambivalent literary laureate in Candice Fox, whose novel Crimson Lakeis set among ‘‘the croc-infested Cairns marshlands’’, ‘‘stretches of yellow sugar cane … running for kilometres, the walls of a hidden city’’.' (Introduction)
-
Quirky Sleuths, Slippery Quarry
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 11 February 2017; (p. 18) 'Cairns and its region are still tourist drawcards, although it’s now ‘‘a mature destination’’, in the anxious phrase of operators seeking to rebrand the sights. Artists have called more often than novelists, among them Ian Fairweather, Donald Friend and Ray Crooke. Now far north Queensland has found an ambivalent literary laureate in Candice Fox, whose novel Crimson Lakeis set among ‘‘the croc-infested Cairns marshlands’’, ‘‘stretches of yellow sugar cane … running for kilometres, the walls of a hidden city’’.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2018 shortlisted Davitt Award — Best Adult Crime Novel
- 2017 shortlisted Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing — Best Novel