AUSTRALIA'S queen of crime writing Candice Fox is spending a day in Noosa during her national 2019 tour to celebrate the release of three books - Gone by Midnight, and two with the highest selling thriller writer in the world, James Patterson.

Having recently returned from a year living in the US, Ms Fox said she was "full of inspiration".

"As a crime writer you enjoy license to do some pretty odd stuff, like visiting actual former crime scenes and pursuing unsolved mysteries," Ms Fox said of her year abroad.

"I took the opportunity to visit a serial killer on death row in San Quentin prison who I have been interested in, and who had a lot of unsolved aspects attached to his crimes."

"I dragged my husband along to try to discover missing remains in the mountains behind Los Angeles and in the downtown area, based on some directions the serial killer gave me," she said.

Ms Fox said it was "a once in a lifetime experience to sit with this man face to face (without bars or glass between us) and try to understand why he committed these crimes while simultaneously trying not to be his next victim".

"You only get those kind of answers by being brave enough to ask the question, and as a crime writer there's nothing as valuable as hearing about evil straight from the source."

Her latest novel, Gone by Midnight, the third instalment in the Crimson Lake series, is set in steamy Far North Queensland.

It's the story of a 10-year-old boy vanishing from a hotel room in Cairns, with no evidence of him leaving the hotel, and the race to find him before the public turns on his mother.

Meet Candice Fox at The River Deck Restaurant, Noosa Marina, on Tuesday, February 19 for a literary lunch hosted by Annie's on Peregian. Tickets are $55 for a two-course lunch and drink on arrival.