Review: Dark Water by Robert Bryndza

Out Now

Published by Bookouture

Purchase from Amazon here

The blurb:

Beneath the water the body sank rapidly. Above her on dry land, the nightmare was just beginning.

When Detective Erika Foster receives a tip-off that key evidence for a major narcotics case was stashed in a disused quarry on the outskirts of London, she orders for it to be searched. From the thick sludge the drugs are recovered, but so is the skeleton of a young child.

The remains are quickly identified as seven-year-old Jessica Collins. The missing girl who made headline news twenty-six years ago.

As Erika tries to piece together new evidence with the old, she must dig deeper and find out more about the fractured Collins family and the original detective, Amanda Baker. A woman plagued by her failure to find Jessica. Erika soon realises this is going to be one of the most complex and demanding cases she has ever taken on.

Is the suspect someone close to home? Someone is keeping secrets. Someone who doesn’t want this case solved. And they’ll do anything to stop Erika from finding the truth.

From the million-copy bestselling author of The Girl in the Ice and The Night Stalker, comes the third heart-stopping book in the Detective Erika Foster series.

Watch out for more from DCI Erika Foster.

My Review:

I’m not sure who l love more, DCI Erika Foster, or the man who bought her to life, Robert Bryndza. This is the third book in the series, and luckily for me all three have been published this year. I am not sure what I would do if there were long gaps between books, because I always want more…..

Dark Water, like the earlier books, is gritty, gripping, and once I picked it up I struggled to put it back down!  The backdrop of this book is set in Bromley, so like the earlier two books, areas I am familiar with, and this enhanced the book even more for me. To the point where as I am out I spot places and want to ask Robert to include them in his next book!

The storyline of Dark Water revolves around a young girl who went missing many years ago, but the case jumps back to life when her remains are found. It is a real whodunit kind of book where I was trying to fathom out who the murderer was all the way along. I love that Robert has a great knack for developing characters and storylines so that just when you think, ‘aha, I know who it is’, something happens and I find myself back wondering all over again.

As well as having a great fast moving plot, in this book we get to know Erika Foster much better than I feel we have previously. I now have a stronger feel for what I imagine she looks like, what makes her tick, and those around her too. She feels like she is evolving both as a detective, but also as a person the further into the series we go. And I love that. I love the human element of it all. I love reading books with strong characters, particularly strong female detectives, and she fits the bill for me. I would compare her to the female leads in Karin Slaughters books. Infact I would say that for me Robert is up there on a par with Karin when eagerly anticipating the new release.

What draws me to this series, and this book in particular? Definitely the writing style of the author. For me he writes with such imagination and so descriptively that I have no problem stepping straight into the scene and visualizing what is going on. I feel drawn to the characters, and am really enjoying getting to know them, so that by this third book they feel like work colleagues!

The plot is really well researched and is gritty enough and fast paced enough to keep me turning the page well into the night, but more than that, I find his writing and plots compelling. I don’t want to put it down. As stories evolve more threads come together to build a complete and at times complex web. I think it is also clever using shorter chapters so that scenes change quickly, which keeps the book flowing.

I am hoping that as I type this Robert is hidden away, head down, either typing the next manuscript or at least researching! I need another Erika Foster fix!

If you don’t believe me, look on social media, or on Amazon and Goodreads and see just how many people are raving about this book, and the others in the series.

Thank you to Bookouture who were kind enough to offer me a copy of the book in return for an honest review.