Author: Robert Bryndza
Publisher: Bookouture
Publication Date: February 2016
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Buy The Book: Amazon | BN | Audible
Description: Her eyes are wide open. Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice…She is not the only one.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.
The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.
What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?
As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.
The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?
My Thoughts: First of all, the gorgeous cover is what captured my notice. Major applause and thumbs-up to the talent who designed it. Secondly, like other authors, who initially are only known for their work in one genre, I thought Robert Bryndza’s work was solely in the romance genre. Having enjoyed Miss Wrong and Mr. Right, I had a lot of anticipation with this one.
The Girl in the Ice is the first installment of a multi-book series featuring a character so damaged by what life has handed her, I applauded her ability to get out of bed, much less think straight and solve a heinous murder. Erika Foster is introduced to us on her first day at the Lewisham police station. She was previously at Manchester but was on an extended leave after she was injured in the line of duty that also took the lives of five other officers, including Erika’s husband, Mark. Right away, Mr. Bryndza paints a very precise picture of the pain Erika has endured on the inside and the outside as well as the feeling that she is being drop-kicked into the deep end of the pool on her first day as lead investigator. I felt very overwhelmed for Erika and admired her tenacity and resolve, especially as she meets with resentment from a fellow officer.
The victim is the daughter of a high-ranking member of the government and Erika’s superiors try at every opportunity to keep her and her team on a very tight leash. Erika’s first meeting with the family doesn’t go well either even though both Erika and the victim’s mother are of Slovak heritage. This actually surprised me as I thought it would give Erika and the family some common ground they could connect on, but the family is less than cooperative with the investigation and wield a lot of control with the authorities.
As Erika’s investigation gets more complex, we learn that the killer is watching Erika’s movements very closely and brazenly puts themselves in very close proximity to Erika on multiple occasions. The author does an amazing job of throwing many suspects at the reader, including members of the victim’s family, ex-boyfriends, fiancé and I even began to suspect some of Erika’s associates and superiors. This made for quite a twisty novel for me, trying to figure out the identity of the killer, which took me to nearly the end of the story.
My Final Verdict: Overall, this was a very good story filled with nail-biting suspense and characters that are drawn so well that the reader can easily connect with them. I highly recommend this book and the rest of the series to readers who enjoy multi-layers of suspense and intrigue, like to be shocked at the outcome and appreciate that a talented author can cross genre lines and do so quite well.
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