She is happy to ruffle feathers and ultimately straight talking and I quite like her. She is argumentative, lacks any kind of political savvy and unafraid to say what she is thinking, no matter who to. She is flawed as so many good detectives are, scarred and tortured by her past and the loss of her husband. With Foster, Bryndza has created an interesting character. Not only that, but her refusal to gie up her particular theory about Andrea’s killer has ut her in the sights of the killer, someone who determines that Foster is too dangerous and is becoming a problem that must be eradicated – permanently. After her actions appear to lead to the death of a potential witness, she is forced out into the cold, put on suspension and unable to investigate and unsure as to her future in the force. With pressure being placed upon the investigation from the top, and Foster following her own line of enquiry regardless of the directives of her superior officers, she soon finds herself back on the outside of the investigation.

What he had not counted on was the prejudice inherent in the Slovak society, or Foster’s ability to alienate the family with her short temper as the family refuse to answer questions, apparently putting reputation over the desire to find Andrea’s killer. He is also keen to use her tenuous connections to Andrea’s mother, the two woman are both from Slovakia, to gain some trust from the family and to allow them to investigate the murder with less hindrance than had been shown them so far. It is her first day in a new job at the Met, hired by an old colleague, Chief Superintendant Marsh, keen to give her a chance following a very public incident at her old force in Manchester. This is Andrea Douglas-Brown, socialite and daughter of Lord Simon Douglas-Brown, a man who is using all of his connections within government and the Met to put his daughter’s disappearance at the top of the Police’s priorities.ĭI Erika Foster has just returned to work following a period of extended absence. A young woman is abducted from a dark London street, her body later found trapped beneath the ice in an old boat house, her eyes wide, her frozen face forever capturing the horror of her untimely death.

The Girl in the Ice by Robert Bryndza