Eden

By: Candice Fox

Narrated by: Lani John Tupu

Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for best crime novel.

The second instalment in the Archer & Bennett series, from the Sunday Times number one best-selling author, Candice Fox.

Most police duos run on trust, loyalty and the desire to see killers in court. But Detective Frank Bennett’s partner, the enigmatic Eden Archer, has nothing to offer him but danger. Eden doesn’t mind catching killers – but it’s not in the courthouse where her justice is served.

And now she is about to head undercover and it’s up to Frank to watch over her.

But as the darkness around Eden gathers, Frank begins to ask himself: is Eden saving lives, or taking them?

Frank is about to find out....

©2014 Candice Fox (P)2016 W F Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"Breathtaking." (Sydney Morning Herald)

"A sizzling page-turner." (Daily Telegraph)

Riveting and Distracting

Frank Bennett is struggling with the loss and trauma that occurred during the first book, and he’s doing it the same way, by drinking too much and generally putting everything off until the last possible moment. Eden Archer lost as much or more, but is so enigmatic and self-contained that she spends most of her time fixing Frank’s life, including pestering him to see their court-ordered therapist, Imogen Stone, who has to clear both detective’s for active duty. Eden is itching to get back to work on their next case; three missing women, all of whom worked for a low-life named Jackie Fry, who runs a farm that seems only to employ ex-cons and reprobates.

Once they start Eden goes undercover, leaving Frank with her nothing to do but monitor her progress with a tech named Juno, and wait. However Eden’s father, Heinrich “Hades” Archer, has problems of his own, mainly a man from his distant past who claims that Hades ruined his life, and is taunting the aging but still dangerous semi-retired fixer into losing his temper and doing something that could ruin his life. So he drafts Frank to help him find solve his problems. At the same time there is another story-line about a young, nameless almost feral street-kid, set in the past, who is “adopted” by a criminal named Bear, and we follow his brutal and gripping tale as it provides us not only with a solid background, but dovetails neatly with the current story.

But I knocked a star off because of some formatting choices that I think the editors/author thought would enhance the listening experience, for me it was just distracting.
There were multiple perspective shifts in each chapter but rarely were they delineated in any understandable way. Perhaps it was meant to keep the listeners on our toes but mostly it was just frustrating.

Lani John Tupu was excellent with the delivery of the story