Book Review: Fatal Witness

Synopsis:

How do you find a killer who has destroyed all the evidence?

While on a late-night walk near her new house in Blackheath, Detective Erika Foster stumbles upon the scene of the brutal murder of aspiring actress and true-crime podcaster Vicky Clarke.

Assigned to the case, Erika discovers that Vicky had been working on a new podcast episode about a sexual predator who preys on young female students around South London. He stakes out his victims in their university residences before intruding in the dead of night.

When Erika learns that Vicky’s notes and sound recordings were stolen from her apartment around the time of her murder, it leads her to believe that Vicky was close to unmasking the attacker . . . and was killed to ensure her silence.

The case takes on a disturbing twist when the body of a young Bulgarian student doctor who resided in the same apartment building is discovered. That development caueses Erika to question everything she thought she knew about Vicky.

With very little evidence uncovered, the clock is ticking. Erika must find the murderer before he strikes again.

Review:

Author Robert Bryndza’s popular fictional detective, Erika Foster, must solve another mystifying case and put a murderer behind bars. As Fatal Witness opens, she has just purchased and moved into a sprawling, dilapidated Victorian house in the Blackheath area of London. A heath is a patch of semi-wild ground, she explains to her sister, Lenka, and the area was used as a burial pit during the Black Death plague. Hence the name. But now it’s an up-and-coming, walkable neighborhood and the house has a view that will never be obstructed, thanks to the area’s sad history. Neither the furnace nor most of the home’s multiple fireplaces work, and Erika hasn’t gotten around to purchasing needed furniture — including a bed — so she winds up sleeping in the bedroom with the single working fireplace on an air mattress (that quickly pops) with the cat who immediately adopts her. She christens her first-ever pet “George.” Erika is beginning to create a future for herself after mourning her husband, Mark, for the four long years since he died during a botched drug raid, along with five other colleagues. After having some dinner, Erika is walking home when she hears a “blood-curdling scream” and immediately responds to the apartment building from which the sound originated.

She discovers Tess Clarke, who has happened upon the body of her sister, Vicky. Tess and her husband operate a restaurant, Goose, in a tonier section of London known as “the village.” When Vicky did not show up for work there, Tess went looking for her sister. Erika finds a disturbingly gruesome murder scene showing evidence of a fierce struggle in an apartment building populated by eclectic tenants, including the two Bulgarian sisters, Maria and Sophie Ivanova, who are studying medicine, and Charles Wakefield, the brother of Julian Wakefield, Assistant Commissioner of Police. Wakefield is a decidedly odd chap whose apartment appears to be stuck in a time warp with no indication that its occupant leads a twenty-first century life. In fact, his brother owns the apartment in which he lives and all associated bills are in Julian’s name. Charles does not have a driver’s license, telephone, computer, or television, and his passport expired in 2012. It is as though, from a bureaucratic viewpoint, he disappeared a decade ago. When additional officers and the forensic team descend upon the crime scene, Wakefield’s bizarre behavior escalates to his assault upon a paramedic . . . and good cause to arrest him.

Erika considers Wakefield a suspect, especially after learning that Vicky confided in Tess about his “creepy” persona and habits, which included listening outside her apartment door. But aside from his brother, Wakefield has another protector. The owner of the apartment building, Henrietta Boulderstone, insists that he joins her in her penthouse apartment each evening for a drink, thereby providing him an alibi and establishing that he could not have killed Vicky within the time parameters the evidence establishes. Erika is not convinced, especially when detectives find a threatening note hidden in a drawer, and is intent upon finding out who sent that note to Wakefield and why in order to determine if it links him to Vicky’s murder.

Vicky was an aspiring actress who had recently converted her bedroom into a recording studio. She was hoping to narrate audiobooks and had recently launched a podcast, calling herself “V.A. Clarke, True Crime Detective.” Oddly, no notebooks or other documentation pertaining to her research is found in her apartment. Also, Vicky failed to upload the latest episode of the podcast. But where is that recording? Was Vicky’s killing motivated by something she revealed — or was about to reveal — in the podcast?

Bryndza introduces Cilla Stone, a flamboyant, retired drama teacher in her sixties, residing in Scotland. She, along with Colin McCabe, was one of Vicky’s teachers at Goldsmith’s Drama Academy, and the two women remained close. Charles was the school’s caretaker from 2007 to 2012. Over the years, several female students have reported being assaulted by intruders in their on-campus housing, but no arrest has been made. And college officials attempt to stonewall efforts to obtain information about those crimes, including details about the university’s investigations – if any – completed after the students’ complaints were tendered. Is there a connection to the murder Erika is investigating back in London?

Of course there is, and Bryndza’s story is clever, intricately-constructed, and contemporary. Once again, he focuses on Erika’s fierce commitment to her career and ensuring that justice is meted out. She is assisted by her loyal colleagues, Detective Inspectors Peterson (with whom she is no longer romantically involved) and Moss, and Isaac Strong, the Forensic Pathologist who calls himself her GBFc9Gay Best Friend0. Erika deftly navigates bureaucratic and politic roadblocks erected by Wakefield, Commander Paul Marsh, and Superintendent Melanie Hudson that threaten to impede her investigation, sometimes risking her career in the name of solving crime. Erika is relentless and always focused on getting justice for victims. As she left the scene of Vicky’s murder, it struck her, “how fragile life was. She wondered how Vicky had felt the last time she walked through her front door. Was she happy? Sad? Scared? Whatever she felt, she probably had no idea she would be leaving in a black body bag.”

Her personal life always takes a backseat to her professional endeavors, as demonstrated by her unwillingness to take time away from her search for the killer to shop for a bed and be at her new home to take delivery of it. And although she still misses Mark, she views her purchase of a new home, “for all its faults,” as a “fresh start. I finally feel like I’m moving on . . .” she tells Lenka. When she finally manages to be at home when her new furniture arrives, it is delivered by Igor Mak, her first boyfriend with whom she lost touch after she moved from Slovakia to the United Kingdom when she was just eighteen years old. Bryndza delivers a sweet, hopeful reunion that causes Erika to feel “a little flutter of excitement” strong enough to make her forget all about the case she is working on.

Bryndza never disappoints, again weaving a crisp and enthralling tale about an educational institution that turned a deaf ear to female students’ complaints about safety concerns in campus residences. He also explores familial duties, responsibilities, and expectations, and the sometimes-steep price of pursuing and revealing truth. He is a master at employing misdirection, and injects shocking plot twists and stunning revelations — as well as a few red herrings — at expertly-timed junctures that propel the story forward. The pace never lags, gradually accelerating as Bryndza places Erika in extreme danger from a crazed and menacing criminal who will use any means necessary to prevent his or her crimes being expose and evade apprehension. Will Erika survive to continue renovating her new home, possibly exploring a renewed relationship with an old flame as she does so, and solve future crimes? Finding out is, as always, highly absorbing and entertaining.