Robert Burns (11)

WALKING ON THIN ICE was an absolutely outstanding crime thriller by author Robert Burns. Rachel Drucker is a junior reporter in Sacramento, California who can’t seem to get a break. She wants to cover the big stories. She keeps getting assigned traffic and drudgery. Her father was a detective who recently passed away. He had a lot of problems with substance abuse, and they all started with a cold case he was unable to solve from twenty years ago—that of Julia Brown. While in therapy, show more Rachel gets a bottle of experimental pills from her doctor that allow her to try “lucid dreaming” a technique that allows her to communicate with her father in the past, or with memories of her father in her own head. Together, they try to solve the case. I found this novel to be completely captivating as Rachel, a young detective in the current timeline (Daniel Brady), and Rachel’s dad in the past timeline, try to figure out what happened to Julia. All the characters in this are flawed. I liked the character development around Rachel’s family as we learn more about the relationship she had with each of her parents. There are some obvious suspects, like Jacob Drake, the local never do well, and some less obvious suspects and the writing flows really well. It kept me guessing all the way to the end of the book. I found myself intrigued by the pills. Are the visits with her father real or just vivid projections of Rachel’s own imagination? This was a terrific read! show less