Books: Detective Erika Foster series
Robert Bryndza’s bestselling Detective Erika Foster crime series follows a tough, determined Slovakian-born detective working with London’s Metropolitan Police. After personal tragedy, Erika throws herself into solving chilling murders across the city. Gritty and fast-paced, the series begins with The Girl in the Ice, where Erika uncovers dark secrets beneath the surface of a powerful family. Each installment blends psychological suspense, brutal crimes, and emotional depth. Erika’s relentless pursuit of justice makes her a compelling heroine. Published in 30 countries and having sold millions of copies, the series is acclaimed for its twist-filled plots, atmosphere, and strong, complex lead. There are now nine books in the series, but each book is written to be both part of a series, and a stand alone story.
The Girl in the Ice
(Detective Erika Foster #1)
The Kindle chart no.1, multi-million-copy-bestselling international phenomenon, The Girl in the Ice is a heart-stoppingly compulsive read that will keep you glued to the pages till the last shocking reveal. If you like Karin Slaughter, LJ Ross and JD Kirk, this book will turn you into a Detective Erika Foster super-fan.
Her eyes are wide open. Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice…She is not the only one.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.
The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.
What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?
As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.
The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?
The Night Stalker
(Detective Erika Foster #2)
If the Night Stalker is watching, you’re already dead…
In the dead of a swelteringly hot summer’s night, Detective Erika Foster is called to a murder scene. The victim, a doctor, is found suffocated in bed. His wrists are bound and his eyes bulging through a clear plastic bag tied tight over his head.
A few days later, another victim is found dead, in exactly the same circumstances. As Erika and her team start digging deeper, they discover a calculated serial killer – stalking their victims before choosing the right moment to strike.
The victims are all single men, with very private lives. Why are their pasts shrouded in secrecy? And what links them to the killer?
As a heat wave descends upon London, Erika will do everything to stop the Night Stalker before the body count rises, even if it means risking her job. But the victims might not be the only ones being watched… Erika’s own life could be on the line.
Dark Water
(Detective Erika Foster #3)
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.
Last Breath
(Detective Erika Foster #4)
He’s your perfect date. You’re his next victim.
When the tortured body of a young woman is found in a dumpster, her eyes swollen shut and her clothes soaked with blood, Detective Erika Foster is one of the first at the crime scene. The trouble is, this time, it’s not her case.
While she fights to secure her place on the investigation team, Erika can’t help but get involved and quickly finds a link to the unsolved murder of a woman four months earlier. Dumped in a similar location, both women have identical wounds – a fatal incision to their femoral artery.
Stalking his victims online, the killer is preying on young pretty women using a fake identity. How will Erika catch a murderer who doesn’t seem to exist?
Then another girl is abducted while waiting for a date. Erika and her team must get to her before she becomes another dead victim, and, come face to face with a terrifyingly sadistic individual.
Gripping, tense and impossible to put down, Last Breath will have you on the edge of your seat, racing to the final dramatic page.
Cold Blood
(Detective Erika Foster #5)
The suitcase was badly rusted, and took Erika several attempts, but it yielded and sagged open as she unzipped it. Nothing could prepare her for what she would find inside…
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. But it’s not the first time she’s seen such a brutal murder…
Two weeks earlier, the body of a young woman was found dumped in an identical suitcase. What connects the two victims? As Erika and her team set to work, they quickly realise they are on the trail of a serial killer who has already made their next move.
Yet just as Erika starts to make headway with the investigation, she is the target of a violent attack. Forced to recover at home, and with her personal life falling apart, everything is stacked against her, but nothing will stop Erika.
As the body count rises, the case takes an even more twisted turn when the twin daughters of Erika’s colleague, Commander Marsh, are suddenly put in terrible jeopardy. The stakes are higher than ever before, but 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.
Deadly Secrets
(Detective Erika Foster #6)
To commit the perfect murder, you need the perfect cover.
On an icy morning, a mother wakes to find her daughter’s blood-soaked body frozen to the road. Who would carry out such a killing on the victim’s doorstep?
Straight off her last harrowing case, Detective Erika Foster is feeling fragile but determined to lead the investigation. As she sets to work, she finds reports of assaults in the same quiet South London suburb where the woman was killed. One chilling detail links them to the murder victim – they were all attacked by a figure in black wearing a gas mask.
Erika is on the hunt for a killer with a terrifying calling card. The case gets more complicated when she uncovers a tangled web of secrets surrounding the death of the beautiful young woman.
Yet just as Erika begins to piece the clues together, she is forced to confront painful memories of her past. Erika must dig deep, stay focused and find the killer. Only this time, one of her own is in terrible danger…
Fatal Witness
(Detective Erika Foster #7)
How do you find a killer who has destroyed all the evidence?
Detective Erika Foster is on a late-night walk near her new house in Blackheath when she stumbles upon the brutal murder of Vicky Clarke, a true-crime podcaster.
Erika is assigned to the case and discovers that Vicky had been working on a new podcast episode about a sexual predator who preys on young female students around South London, staking out his victims in their halls of residence before breaking in at the dead of night. When Erika discovers that Vicky’s notes and sound recordings were stolen from her flat at the time of her murder, it leads her to believe that Vicky was close to unmasking the attacker, and she was killed to guarantee her silence.
The case takes on a disturbing twist when the body of a young Bulgarian student doctor is discovered in the same building, and this makes Erika question everything she thought she knew about Vicky. With very little evidence, the clock is ticking to find the killer before he strikes again.
Lethal Vengeance
(Detective Erika Foster #8)
The man lay on his front, his arms and legs bound and pulled up with a rope connecting the two. His head was arched back, so he faced the curtains, and there was masking tape over his mouth. Erika gingerly reached out and checked his pulse.
Yep. Dead all right.
When Detective Erika Foster finds politician Neville Lomas naked, hog-tied, and dead in his own bed, skittish higher-ups at the Met quickly rule the death from natural causes. Case closed . . . until two months later when a well-known casting director and a star footballer are found murdered and tied with the same knots. The Met can no longer ignore what’s staring them in the face: there’s a serial killer loose in London, and they’re out to settle a score.
As Erika and her team investigate, things take a strange turn as CCTV footage turns up five female suspects . . . and they’re all identical.
In the hunt to identify the women, Erika is outpaced at every turn by an elusive sex worker with dirt on enough powerful men to make the Met’s top brass nervous – and desperate.
As time ticks away until the killer strikes again, it’s up to Erika to untangle the web of evidence and answer the critical questions: What ties the victims together, who else is caught up in this scandal, and how far are the higher-ups willing to go to protect their own?
Gripping, tense and impossible to put down, Lethal Vengeance will have you on the edge of your seat, racing to the final dramatic page.
Chasing Shadows
(Detective Erika Foster #9)
In a world of lies. . . The truth hides in the shadows
In a deadly game of cat and mouse, Detective Erika Foster confronts her greatest nemesis—where the lines of justice blur and secrets unravel.
A collapsed ceiling. A dead body. What starts as a routine 999 call takes an unexpected twist when Detective Chief Inspector Erika Foster arrives on the scene and discovers the body of a woman in an empty flat, with all DNA evidence scrubbed away. When forensics find cocaine residue coating every surface of the ceiling, Erika calls in the drug dogs, who lead her to a mysterious parcel locker on the outside wall of the property. Chasing down the locker’s owner leads Erika back where she never expected to be – staring into the eyes of Jerome Goodman, the drug dealer who murdered her husband, Mark, ten years ago.
She arrests him on the spot, but there’s just one problem. His passport and his solicitor say his name is Kieron Bagshaw, and his record is squeaky clean.
With top brass demanding she take leave to deal with her PTSD and even her closest colleagues questioning her sanity, Erika decides to use the time off to do some digging of her own. Trawling for clues through old newspapers, encrypted messages, and secret underground passageways, Erika makes a series of shocking discoveries that move Mark’s murder from cold case to active investigation, all while flying under the Met’s radar.
The revelations will push Erika to the brink, forcing her to confront the trauma of her past and the truth about what happened the day Mark died – and who among her friends was involved from the shadows.