The Girl in the Ice by Robert Bryndza #RobertBryndza @JanCramervoice @bookouture

the setup…
After the young woman found beneath the ice in a South London park is identified as the daughter of a prominent politician, Chief Superintendent Marsh calls in Detective Erika Foster to lead the investigation as she’s had more experience with high profile murders of this type. Erika is coming off of leave following an investigation into her last case where her whole team was killed, including her husband. While her instincts and skills are excellent, Erika’s political lens, or lack thereof, ruffles lots of feathers internally and externally. But members of her new team recognized that she’s the leader to follow as the case gets complicated and dangerous.

the heart of the story…
Erika Foster is a talented but broken detective, still finding her way and footing as she deals with the grief from losing her husband and team. I admired her, even when I found some of her behavior reckless and risky, as she stood up to her spineless leadership who was afraid of offending the victim’s influential family. She made great personal progress, thanks to the loyalty and trust of her new team and others that care about her. The case was exceptionally thorny and I went back and forth with several theories. I did figure out the murderer but only pretty close to the reveal. No matter as I was utterly hooked by the mystery.

the narration…
Jan Cramer is one of my favorite narrators, mostly from her DI Kim Stone series performances, and she proves that she’s no one series wonder. It took a minute to erase Kim from my brain and once I did, she owned Erika and her teammates. I’m in for the audio version going forward.

the bottom line…
I’ve waited a long time for one of my groups to select this series as a group read and one finally came through. This story surpassed my expectations and I’m struggling to not binge through the series. Yes, Erika’s got some personal challenges but her investigative chops are superior. The case had all the challenges and clues I like in a police procedural and the recurring characters are already intriguing me. This was truly worth the wait.

Book Info

• Release Date: February 12, 2016
• Series: Detective Erika Foster #1
• Narrator: Jan Cramer
• Audio Length: 10 hours, 1 minute
• Publisher: Bookouture

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