Book Review: COLD BLOOD by Robert Bryndza (Detective Erika Foster #5)

Title: Cold Blood (Detective Erika Foster #5)

Author: Robert Bryndza
Publisher: Bookouture
Read: September 2017

Expected publication: 20 September 2017

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

Book Description (Goodreads):

When a battered suitcase containing the dismembered body of a young man washes up on the shore of the river Thames, Detective Erika Foster is shocked. She’s worked on some terrifying cases but never seen anything like this before.

As Erika and her team set to work, she makes the link with another victim – the body of a young woman dumped in an identical suitcase two weeks ago.

Erika quickly realises she’s on the trail of a serial killer who’s already made their next move. Yet just as Erika starts to make headway with the investigation, she is the victim of a brutal attack.

But nothing will stop Erika. As the body count rises, the twin daughters of her colleague Commander Marsh are abducted, and the stakes are higher than ever before. Can Erika save the lives of two innocent children before it’s too late? She’s running out of time and about to make a disturbing discovery…there’s more than one killer.

My musings:

I’ve been a big fan of the Erika Foster series from the start, and was duly excited to see that a fifth book is coming out, doing my usual happy dance around the kitchen when I got the approval for an ARC from Netgalley. I’m not sure what it is exactly that makes Erika such a stand-out character for me, but I find the series totally addictive! Bryndza has a very direct, “no-frills” writing style that works well for the genre and really appeals to me. The short chapters are filled with action and move the story along at a good pace. Plus, I have grown very fond of the team of detectives and forensic scientists that have been featuring alongside Erika, eagerly following their side stories.

As usual, Bryndza has given Erika a chilling and challenging case to solve, which she approaches in her usual “give-it-all” manner, determined to find the killer/s before the body count mounts. Parts of the book are narrated from the perpetrators’ POV, and I must admit that on this occasion this did not work as well for me than in previous novels, especially Nina’s diary entries. The trouble I have with most fictional diaries is that they rarely read like a real-life diary, and tend to slow the story down with lots of internal dialogue. Personally, I thought that this distracted me from the main story and pushed Erika and her team into the background. I felt that I was not invested enough in Nina’s story to care about her most intimate thoughts, which made the book flag a bit for me in the middle. I would have much preferred to be more involved in Erika’s investigation and problem solving, which was overshadowed by the story of the two perpetrators and always being a few steps ahead of the police. This is purely a personal preference and will probably not bother other readers, but I didn’t feel that Cold Blood offered the same thrilling cat-and-mouse game as previous books. I am also not a big fan of the theme of detectives becoming targets, finding it overused and often quite far-fetched. That said, once the story picked up pace in the last quarter of the book, there was plenty of action to make up for the short lull, and I loved the tense and thrilling finale. 

Summary:

Whilst Book 5 was not my favourite instalment in the Erika Foster series, it features a chilling murder case, a ruthless perpetrator and plenty of action, and I am sure that many readers will love it. I am still a big fan of the series and am looking forward to Erika’s next case - I hope that she will finally find a bit more happiness in her personal life!

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.