Book excerpt: 'One of the best crime thrillers of the year' LEE CHILD 'A masterful novel' HARLAN COBEN 'A bright new star' JAMES PATTERSON Six minutes - that's all it took to ruin Detective Ted Conkaffey's life. Accused but not convicted of abducting a teenage girl, 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 . . .