I was given a free copy of this via netgalley. The Girl in the Ice is the debut crime novel from Robert Bryndza. The story starts with a young man discovering a body in a frozen river. It turns out to be missing wealthy socialite Amanda. Erika is called upon to investigate the murder although she is still recovering from her last case that went terribly wrong. She is given a new team, but is hampered at every turn by family, as well as her own demons.
Whilst overall I did enjoy the novel, I have to confess to finding it a little disappointing. I thought the writing was ok. The descriptions gave a real sense of doom and gloom and you felt the despair and misery of a city in the grip of winter with a murderer at large. However although the story had potential I may have fallen foul of believing the hype too much. It was billed as a gripping serial killer thriller, so sounded right up my street. In reality I would say it was more of a police procedural. I do wonder perhaps if I had read the novel before reading any reviews would I have been expecting less and therefore wouldn’t have been so disappointed?
The idea of the girls trapped in ice sounded very chilling (excuse the intended pun!) yet for some reason it just didn’t seem to take off as it should have done. I personally thought the characters were all a little clichéd. The main character of Erika didn’t really garner the sympathy that she should have done, neither from me nor seemingly from her colleagues at the start of the story. My irritation at the silly mistakes she made combined with the well used character ploy of a rogue detective going on their gut instinct just annoyed me. I also felt that I’d missed something in terms of the building of relationships. One minute she was the outsider that no one liked, the next they were friends with her. I’m always keen to read a good female character but I felt this was a very one dimensional character that didn’t act in a very convincing way.
However saying all that, the story itself was quite interesting and had many twists and turns. The ending was not a surprise as most of the way along it was obvious it was one of two people, yet the final few chapters did perk the story up. Whilst I can’t say this was one of my most favourite reads, I would read more of Robert’s novels but hopefully next time Erika can have moved on a bit and truly be a strong female lead.
A crime readers blog 