Dark Water
Detective Erika Foster, Book #3
By Robert Bryndza
ISBN: 9781538749760
Author’s Website: http://www.robertbryndza.com
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar
4 Stars
Summary
USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Robert Bryndza is back again with the third book in the thrilling, crime series, starring Erika Foster, which has sold over 2 millions copies worldwide.
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 when she vanished twenty-six years ago.
As Erika tries to piece together new evidence with the old, she discovers a family harbouring secrets, a detective plagued by her failure to find Jessica, and the mysterious death of a man living by the quarry.
Is the suspect someone close to home? Someone doesn’t want this case solved. And they’ll do anything to stop Erika from finding the truth.
Review
Dark Water begins as all of Robert Bryndza’s stories do, with a body being disposed of. On an autumn night of 1990, two shadowy figures drop the body of Jessica Collins in a quarry, where she will stay for some time. Twenty six years later, Erika Foster and her new team are looking for drugs in the Hayes quarry trying to find the evidence to bust a drug dealer, after finding what they are looking for the diving team finds the remains of Jessica Collins. At first, the case is not given to her, but later on, when the DNA matches Jessica the case is reopened, and Erika asks some favors to get the case and find the killers of the young girl.
Erika sets her team and old friends DI Moss and DI Peterson to look into the old files and evidence with new eyes. She meets the Collins and learns that they have changed a lot from the family in the newspapers and reports. Mary and Martin have separated, but not divorce, Laura Collins and Tody Collins are now all grown up and still mourn their sister in their own way. The Collins have secrets and many people are interested in Jessica’s death, but some want the truth to remain a secret and will do everything they can to do it, even kill again.
It’s now to Erika and her team job to find what happened to Jessica all those years ago and solve the case before the killer get away.
I like the Detective Erika Foster series; the characters and the stories are compelling and want you to continue reading. I’m happy that Erika is growing with each book and relies more on her colleagues and friends.
Something that I enjoy about Robert Bryndza’s books is that I can never predict who the killer is. The worst thing is that we get the POV of the killer but don’t get their names until it’s finally revealed. Compared to other mystery novels this is an aspect that I truly like, and it gives mystery its true meaning. I like to read a lot of crime and mystery books, and this series always has me in suspense and keeps me hanging until the end.
In this new story, we get to see more of the personal life of Erika. After a couple of years of her husband’s death, we see an Erika that has started to move on and admit that she doesn’t want to be alone anymore. With this, we start to see the beginning signs of a romance starting to flourish with one of her co-workers. At the same time, we get to finally meet Erika’s sister Lenka and her nieces and nephew. While it is not the best-planned visit by Lenka, or under the best circumstances, it does give Erika the family comfort that she needs given the case she is working on.
In Dark Water, we get the return of many characters from the previous books, DI Moss and DI Peterson make their comeback and other familiar faces. Among the old and new characters, new subplots are created that lay the foundation for future narratives in books.
I’m a fan of the crime mystery and solving of cases, reading about the process and work that detectives do is the best. In Dark Water, Erika starts to make a name for herself by being known as the one solving cases nobody can or wants to try. Everyone thought the Jessica Collins kidnapping was a dead end and a career-ender.
If you are a fan of Robert Bryndza and his work, then I recommend Dark Water. Erika Foster’s new case is old, but she has decided to give justice to a little girl that went to a friend’s birthday party and never returned home. Not all secrets stay hidden, sometimes water brings it back up.
