The Chase

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Detective Harriet Blue is chasing down a violent killer on a university campus in a terrifying case that's far more sinister than she ever imagined. The audiobook has two narrators and that decision just made the book even harder to follow. With way too many characters, we also have to deal with the characters having two different people narrating their lines. The female narrator handled things from Celine and Trinity's POV and the male narrator handled things from the viewpoint of the convicts. Once these people start interacting with each other, the characters literally have two voices. For instance, Kradle sounds like a rough voiced old guy for most of the book until the female narrator has to voice him and then he sounds like a soft voiced young guy. The audiobook would have worked much better, for me, with one narrator. Reading Candice Fox's latest thriller was so much fun. She is so good at writing gritty, fast paced thrillers infused with humour and filled with quirky and memorable characters. Death Row supervisor Captain Celine Osbourne is determined to make it her mission to capture one particular death-row inmate, John Kradle, or, Inmate Number 1707. But there’s a hiccup. Even though Kradle has been convicted of murdering his wife, son and sister-in-law, he maintains he’s innocent. He implores Osbourne to take a long hard look at his case. So, if Kradle didn’t kill his family – who did? With this unexpected turn of events and his chance at [freedom], Kradle seizes the opportunity to return home to Mesquite to find his family’s killer before Osbourne and the authorities can close in on him. John Kradle sees this as a chance to prove his innocence. He was sent to prison for the murder of his wife and child twenty-six years earlier. His story is the most intriguing.

Some let no one stand in their way to “freedom,” and there is one who lets nothing stand in his mission to prove his innocence. The narrative follows them all, the things they do, starting with the escape and continuing as they fan out across Nevada and into the unsuspecting world. Readers get to know them well -- the hunters and the hunted; the friend and the foe; the good, the bad, and those who cross between categories changing identities like a chameleon. All are running for their lives. stars! Candice Fox is high on my favourite list for her compelling mysteries and action thrillers. She specializes in quirky, memorable characters, strong but troubled female leads, unexpected twists and brilliant storytelling. Seriously gripping and compelling, and at the same time seriously funny in all the right places! I had quite a few laugh out loud moments as well as a few...”how on earth is this going to end?!”...moments. It took a long time to explain why Celine had such an obsession with Kradle to the exclusion of worrying about some other, much badder guys. A part of me thinks it might have worked better to move this up in the timeline. I, at least, spent a lot of time obsessing about why she was obsessing over him.The Chase is a wild manhunt through the desolate Nevada desert and into Las Vegas. This is an action thriller that provides numerous high points along with a poignant story of attempted redemption. There’s a bus stopped in the desert half a mile from the prison walls,” the voice said. It was a male voice. Soft, clipped. Confident. “If you go to the window behind you and look out, you’ll see it sitting on the road.”

With that, the largest manhunt in United States history is on. In response to a hostage situation, more than 600 inmates from the Pronghorn Correctional Facility, including everyone on Death Row, are released into the Nevada Desert. Criminals considered the worst of the worst, monsters with dark, violent pasts, are getting farther away by the second. Finally, a word about the audiobook narration. There are two performers, one female and one male. I think that setup works if each performer is reading from a single character’s perspective, so that you begin to identify the voice with the character. Here it’s just the woman reading if the section is from a female character’s perspective, and the man reading if the section is from a male character’s perspective. But there are multiple male and female characters focused on throughout the novel, and both narrators have to do voices for characters of the other gender too, until the constantly changing narrator became a bit distracting. And I actively disliked the harsh, Southern accent used for John Kradle. It genuinely left me wondering if I would have drawn the same negative impression of his character if I didn’t hear the voice. It’s why I was so interested to read Candice Fox’s latest book, The Chase. It’s no simple murder mystery, but in fact follows a mass prison outbreak which sees the release of 600 convicted criminals into the Nevada Desert, and the attempt to recapture them. Pay attention. There’s a bus stopped in the desert half a mile from the prison walls. The bus driver is dead. Are you listening, Grace?’ prisoners to be precise, including some of the world’s most violent criminals currently residing on death row, have escaped en-masse into the Nevada Desert and have started heading in every direction.Oh, and if The Chase ever gets made into a movie, I sure hope the producers have Nicolas Cage's number on speed dial.) What makes this novel extraordinarily exciting for me is how unusual it is to be rooting for both the cat (Claire Osbourne) and the mouse (John Kradle), as they are both (in their individual ways) protagonists.

Charged with the task of rounding up this mass of human refuse is Trinity Parker, a US Marshall. She is well versed in cleaning up these types of messes and offers a sharp tongue ahead of a rapier wit. Right from the off you get the sense that she is going to be a character who’ll steal every scene. The action is consistently strong throughout. As you can imagine with more than 600 criminals on the run in the vicinity of Las Vegas, a lot of shenanigans take place. At regular intervals we are treated to a vignette of a bunch of ex-cons, who have reverted to type, running amok in the area. They’re also in the process of being apprehended too. And not all of them come easy.Daringly audacious, gritty and fast paced, and at times very amusing....with many seriously laugh out loud moments. That’s what makes it scary when someone like Burke is set loose. Who are his people? What are they planning? Her eyes wandered over the scene at the front of the bus. The passengers in the first two rows were examining their hands or touching their faces as though they were damp. Hundreds of tiny cubes of glass lay over the driver, the dash, and the aisle, the side window having neatly collapsed and sprayed everywhere, exactly as it was designed to do. Emily recognized Sarah Gravelle up there, rising unsteadily from her seat and walking to the driver’s side. Emily could see, even from her distant position, that half of the driver’s head was gone. Sarah looked at the driver, and everybody watched her do it, as if they were waiting for her to confirm what they already knew. Although this is primarily a hunt and recapture story, through Krandle there is a cold case investigation (of sorts) taking place. Krandle must prove himself innocent but to do that he’s got to unearth the true killer. Of course, when you’re on the run from the law plus dodgin wrong ‘uns at every turn, conducting any type of murder investigation will be a challenge. As with all thrillers, the storyline pulls the reader along by ending chapters on cliffhangers and the allure of a good mystery. However, it did at times feel as though Fox was struggling to maintain the pace and consistency of the story across the numerous threads which comprise it. There is the central criminal figure of the story, John Kradle, who is using the opportunity of his unexpected liberation to seek exoneration for the crime for which he was sent to jail: the murder of his family. Kradle’s story is quite interesting, although the payoff felt a little underwhelming. Without giving away spoilers, to my mind, the satisfaction of a really good thriller and mystery arrives when the previously introduced elements contribute coalesce into an explanation at least part of which you think to yourself ‘gosh, how did I miss that!?’ and that isn’t really the case here for Kradle’s story. Then we have the prison guard, Celine Osbourne, whose fixation on Kradle is due to her tragic past, despite the fact that she should be assisting the search to round up the other escapees, and help to find out why they were let out in the first place. The interaction between Osbourne and Kradle was interesting, and an enjoyable read. However, they aren’t the only narrative elements across the story.