“Walking on Thin Ice” by Robert Burns

Rachel is young, smart, and ambitious. She is determined to make a career in journalism, and when she comes upon a story that promises the breakthrough she has been waiting for, she dives straight in, discarding possible danger and unpleasant consequences.

Julia Brown disappeared twenty years ago. Who kidnapped her? Is she dead? Where is the body? Two decades later, these questions remained unanswered.

Rachel’s father, Detective Ted Drucker, a prominent figure in the Sacramento Police force, couldn’t solve the case of Julia Brown’s disappearance. The mistakes he made at the early stage led to irreparable damage to the investigation. Ultimately, it cost him his life.  And now his daughter sinks deeper and deeper into the same rabbit hole.

“Walking on Thin Ice” by Robert Burns keeps you on the edge of your seat while you try to figure out ‘whodunit’, and, at the same time, it makes you invested in Rachel’s personal story and the inner workings of her mind. I like this combination since for me, it’s not enough to follow the action. To become truly invested in a book, I need to understand its characters.

The author does an excellent job at showing the reader who Racker Drucker is. I can’t say that I like her, but I understand what drives her and it makes reading her story especially exciting. Rachel comes from the generation who’s been taught that good and bad have solid, inflexible boundaries. When she finds out more about her father’s work as a detective, she judges him according to these stiff rules. It does make her a good person, but I think that as her career progresses – I hope to read more of Rachel Drucker’s books by the author! – she will learn that the reality of the police and also journalism work often makes one sway from the rulebook.

I appreciated the author’s creative approach to using the lucid dreaming theory in the plot. It was fresh and made the story about the investigation stand out. I also liked how the portrait of legendary Detective Drucker changed as Racher learned more about her childhood and the gradual revelation of how her father’s obsession with Julia Brown’s case had changed their family’s life.

“Walking on Thin Ice” by Robert Burns is a great mix of crime fiction and psychological drama that provides readers with both the excitement of a complicated investigation and delving into the personal struggles of the main character.