Gathering Dark: a killer, a thief, a crime boss and a cop walk into a bar….

What is this about?

Sneak and Blair, former cell mates in prison, start working together to find Sneak’s daughter Daley, and to try and figure out just what she was involved in. Along the way, Blair is forced to go to Jessica Sanchez, the woman who put her in prison for help — unbeknownst to her, Jessica is undergoing a crisis of faith in her fellow cops, and questioning herself and her work.

What else is this about?

Stellar characterisation in making a bunch of characters like these work together so well!

Blurb

From Australia’s most exciting and original crime writer comes another electrifying thriller, set in Los Angeles, introducing a new – and decidedly unconventional – team of ‘detectives’.

A convicted killer. A gifted thief. A vicious crime boss. A disillusioned cop.
Together they’re a missing girl’s only hope.

Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected surgeon in Los Angeles, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean to win back custody of her son.

But when her former cellmate, Sneak Lawlor, begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Joined by LA’s most feared underworld figure, Ada Maverick, the crew of criminals bring outlaw tactics to the search for Dayly.

Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a $7 million mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one.

It’s been ten years since Jessica arrested Blair for the cold-blooded murder of her neighbour. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor and her friends early one morning she expects abuse, maybe even violence.

What comes instead is a plea for help.

Gathering Dark is the beginning of a new series for Candice Fox, featuring a cast of strong, complicated women – and two in particular, Jessica and Blair.

Blair and prison

Blair, a former doctor, is working in a gas station after being released from prison about a year before. She went to jail for 9 years for the murder of her neighbour – a death Jessica arrested her for.

She is now out of prison and trying to rebuild her life, and get more custody and visitation with her son, Jamie. Jamie is living with Sasha, Blair’s friend, and has been since she went to jail. Blair is finding her feet, but then she is robbed – by a young girl, who is clearly in trouble. Given that her job is a front for the mob, she replaces the money stolen with her own because she didn’t want them going after the girl.

It’s later that she finds out that the girl who robbed her is Dayly, Sneak’s daughter, who she gave up for adoption years before. And Sneak is an ex-prisoner, like Blair, who told Dayly that Blair, her friend worked at the gas station.

In the beginning of the book, we don’t quite know the full story behind Blair’s imprisonment, but it’s clear that Blair wants to think of herself as a good person, who will help a friend find her daughter, deserve more time with her son — and not kill a man in cold blood.

Except, as Sneak and Blair start investigating what’s going on, we realise this story is about family – whether we lose them, or reclaim them, or find them in odd places, like death row in a prison

A thief, a killer and a crime boss band together

I started the book not sure how Sneak and Blair would work together, before Fox threw in Ada — a crime boss on the outside and inside prison, really. It is through the three of them that readers begin to realise what prison meant for Blair, how she endured and came out after 9 years still determined to be a good person, who is working towards earning her son’s trust and love.

It’s a skillful introduction of an important part of Blair’s history without needing to spell things out for readers.

Ada and Sneak are equally frustrating and fascinating characters because while they are secondary characters to Blair and Jessica, Fox makes them fully realised and compelling characters that you will care about, be frustrated and angry with as well.

Jessica and Blair

Jessica is a determined cop, who when the book opens, has been bequeathed a million-dollar house in an affluent suburb by an elderly man who wanted to reward her for finding the man that murdered his daughter.

Unfortunately, that drew back the curtain on just how much her partner hates her, everything she does and did in order to solve the murder – and then leads to escalating physical violence between them. But it’s not just him, it’s the brothers and sisters in blue who look at her sideways for being willed the house for doing her job, and that comes with a healthy dose of jealousy because it’s a million-dollar house.

For all the crap that the police force is throwing at her – misogyny and bullshit in general – Jessica doesn’t want to let her family-in-blue go. They gave her an identity, a purpose and a way to define herself outside the confines of her family and their expectations.

So, while Blair is putting her life back together and helping Sneak, Jessica’s life is slowly falling apart. I appreciated that no matter what her partner threw at her, Jessica never gave him the benefit of reacting – instead, she got even.

And then Blair walks back into her life, asking for help to fond Dayly.

The case

Dayly is missing, and despite the danger to her freedom, Blair knows she owes Sneak for helping her in prison. And she just genuinely wants to reclaim the woman she was.

Together with Sneak and Ada, and her crew of criminals, they begin investigating, bringing them into conflict with cops and stalling them from doing anything further. That’s when Jessica comes into play.

She doesn’t want anything to do with them because her life as a cop is disintegrating in more ways than one, causing her to doubt many things, including everything that happened 9 years ago in Blair’s arrest.

While the conflict that Jessica is going through makes for an interesting character, she is also hard to know or relate to in some ways. I feel like as a reader, I know Blair better than I do Jessica when the book started, but I did appreciate there was noticeable character development over the course of the book for her.

Her determination and skill as navigating the police force gets them more leads, and more information as to what Dayly was involved in, but at the same time, puts the team in direct conflict with more cops involved in the case.

For much of the book, Jessica and Blair are working separately, which frustrated me because they and their relationship in the blurb made me want to read this book – and when they are together, I enjoyed Jessica more. There’s another character in the book that says Jessica subconsciously needs a partner and that is an accurate description of her I think.

I will say, Blair, Sneak, Ada and Jessica are the oddest of partners, yet Candice Fox makes their partnership work wonderfully. It’s filled with lies, and more lies, a little bit of theft and drug use, even as they complement each other in their search. Sneak especially, is a character I hope to see in future books.

As I said, the case is about family, and not every family has their happy ending in this book. Candice Fox has a talent for bringing together the strangest characters, yet she makes them work wonderfully — and never fails to leave me wanting more.