I really enjoyed this mystery. I like a good mystery where the foreshadowing does not allow me to predict who did what, and this one definitely delivered. I was caught by surprise toward the end when I pieced together in my own mind what happened and was right but it took me to the end to do so. I enjoyed the tension, the trauma and drama of this book and would highly recommend it.

From my blog: Always With a Book

This is the fourth book in Robert Bryndza’s Kate Marshall series and I just love this series. I have been a fan of this author ever since discovering his other crime fiction series, The Erika Foster series, which I also really like, and I have to say, as much I love Erika Foster, I might just love Kate Marshall even more!

As I typically say when reviewing books in a series, this latest book of course can be read without reading the earlier books, but I HIGHLY recommending reading the series in order. Yes, the author does give some bare-bones highlights of what has come before, but of course I always think it is best to have read the earlier books in order to have a richer reading experience. But do know that each book is a self-contained case, so if you do pick this one up and enjoy it, perhaps it will entice you to go back and start the series from the beginning.

This book deals with a trope that can sometimes be a little tiresome, but in Robert Bryndza’s hands it was anything but – that of a missing child. It was a cold case and the more Kate and Tristan looked into it, the more questions the seemed to come up with. This case is not quite as straightforward as they thought it would be.

I loved all the twists and turns this book took. It was an engaging, heart-racing plot that kept me gripped to the storyline from start to finish. It was also quite emotional at times, which I was not expecting. I kept thinking I had things worked out, but the red herrings fooled me time and again, which I loved!

I’ve enjoyed all the books in this series, but this just might be my new favorite…that is until we get to the next one! And hopefully there will be another one? I guess time will tell.

This is the fourth installment of the Kate Marshall series which was new to me. When I received this novel, I started at book one, Nine Elms, and read the whole series in order and I'm glad I did. The author does a good job of explaining things so it's not necessary to do what I did. However, the first book is tightly woven with Kate as a character. You don't know much about her before Nine Elms, but you do know how much it changed her after and is integral to understanding her mind set in the other books. In this book, I loved how the author introduced Kate's newest case by talking to her bedmate in hospital rather than someone calling her or Tristan at the office. All through this book Kate is still dealing with her demons magnified by the missing boy she agreed to find and that she's still recovering from near drowning, making her unpleasant to be around sometimes. Tristan, her much younger business partner, let's her get away with it too often, but he feels inferior most of the time, no thanks to his sister. It's a strange dichotomy because Kate makes him feel like his sister does but Kate is his best cheerleader too. As with every book, this is another cold case, trying to find three year old Charlie, who disappeared eleven years ago while camping with family. It's fascinating how you follow along as they uncover clues methodically, slowly peeling back layers, and solving the case. Will this one have a happy ending?
Thank you to NetGalley and Raven Street Publishing for this ARC.

Devil’s Way is the fourth installment of Robert Bryndza’s Kate Marshall, detective turned private investigator, series. When Kate ends up the hospital after nearly drowning, she meets Jean, a grandmother whose grandson disappeared on a camping trip 11 years earlier. Kate and her partner, Tristan, don't hesitate to take the case.
I love the relationship/partnership Kate and Tristan have built. They work well together and have complimentary personalities ❤️
Although the ending wasn’t super surprising, I loved how Bryndza keeps the reader turning the pages and guessing.

EXCERPT: 'Mum, is Charlie with you?' she said.

'He's not in the tent?' said Jean, feeling panic return.

'No.'

Jean pushed past her and looked inside. Both sleeping bags were empty and she felt her stomach drop.

'He must be with Joel,' she said, coming back and seeing Becky's worried face.

'No, Mum, he's not. I thought I heard him outside our tent. That's why I came out to look for him. Why aren't you with him?'

'I went for a cigarette. Just for a minute,' said Jean. The lie dropping out of her mouth without any preparation needed.

'What if he went down to the river? I don't know if it's rained, can you hear how loud the water is?' said Becky. Her voice had a tinge of hysteria.

'Let's look. Charlie can't have wandered far,' said Jean, trying to keep calm. The fact that Becky was more scared than angry frightened her.

Becky woke Joel and they all found torches and started to search, taking in the river, the rocks on the Tor, and the surrounding fields. The arcs of light from their torches swept across the dark landscape, searching. The river was higher than it had been the day before, and as Jean swung her torch over the dark, raging torrent, and called out Charlie's name, her voice seemed to get swallowed up by the darkness. She felt sick as the minutes passed, turning to an hour, then two. Charlie was nowhere to be found. Around 4am, the sky started to turn light, and this was when they called the police.

As the sun rose over the moors, a police car arrived, then two more.

The search began in earnest, but they never found Charlie.

ABOUT 'DEVIL'S WAY': When Private Investigator Kate Marshall is rushed to hospital after being pulled into a riptide current in the sea, the near-death experience leaves her shaken. During her recovery, she befriends Jean, an elderly lady on the same ward. Jean tells the harrowing story of how her three-year-old grandson, Charlie, went missing eleven years ago during a camping trip on Dartmoor.

By the time Kate is well enough to go home, she's agreed to take on the case, but when Kate and her trusty sidekick Tristan start to look at the events of that fateful night, they discover that Jean has a dark past that could have put Charlie in jeopardy.

Was Charlie abducted? Or did he fall into Devil's Way? A rushing river that vanishes into a gorge close to where they were camping.

When Kate and Tristan discover that a social worker who flagged concerns about Jean and her daughter was found brutally murdered shortly after Charlie vanished, it makes them question everything they thought they knew about the family...

MY THOUGHTS: I think this is the best of the series yet! I was riveted throughout even though I figured out what had happened to Charlie well before the reveal.

Kate and Tristan make a great team, although their relationship takes a bit of a knock in this book. And other than an admonishing phone call, Kate's son Jake is absent. I kind of missed him.

This is a multilayered mystery; it seems the more Kate and Tristan dig into Charlie's disappearance, the more mysteries and unanswered questions they uncover. Cold cases always fascinate me, and Charlie's disappearance is no exception. Things become even more interesting when Charlie's case is linked to the unsolved murder of a social worker who had more than a passing interest in Charlie.

If you are looking for a good twisty mystery, this is it.

Devil's Way can be read as a stand-alone but, believe me, you will get so much more out of it if you read this series from the beginning.

I read/listened to Devil's Way - probably listened more than read - but both formats are great. Devil's Way is brilliantly narrated by Jan Cramer.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#DevilsWay #NetGalley

I: @robertbryndza #ravenstreetpublishing

T: @RobertBryndza #RavenStreetPublishing

#contemporaryfiction #crime #murdermystery #mystery #privateinvestigator

THE AUTHOR: Robert Bryndza was born in the UK and lived in America and Canada before settling in Slovakia with his Slovak husband Ján.

When he's not writing Rob is learning Slovak, trying to train two crazy dogs, or watching Grand Designs all in the hope that he'll be able to understand his mother-in-law, build his dream house, and get the dogs to listen.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Raven Street Publishing via Netgalley for providing both a digital and audio ARC of Devil's Way by Robert Bryndza for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon,Instagram and my webpage

Kate Marshall's life changed following the sudden death of her dear friend and Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, Myra. Kate was surprised to learn that Myra bequeathed her business and home to Kate, conditioned on Kate launching her own detective agency. Tristan, her former research assistant at Ashdean University, where Kate was a lecturer in criminology, became her partner. It is now 2018, and together they are running both the agency and the caravan site Kate inherited from Myra which provides an income stream between cases.

Kate has maintained both her sobriety and relationship with her beloved son, Jake, who is now a junior at a California university and opts to remain in Los Angeles for the summer to complete an internship at a prestigious film company. Kate starts every morning, rain or shine, with a swim in the ocean. But on a lovely June day, she immediately notices that something is wrong. She comes up for air and feels a violent current tugging at her waist and legs. As she is dragged back under the water, she realizes that she has been caught in a riptide and is powerless to escape. Meanwhile, while she is fighting for her life, Tristan is staking out a house across town, watching to see if the husband of their client will emerge with another woman.

Twenty-four hours later, Kate awakens in the intensive care unit and learns that she was rescued by a couple of her guests at the caravan site who observed her struggle in the water. As Kate begins recovering, she gets acquainted with another patient, Jean, whose bed is only obscured from Kate's view by a curtain. Jean overheard the physician mention that Kate is a private detective and begins questioning her about the type of cases she has handled. Specifically, cases of missing persons. Jean is a mere fifty-five years old, but looks nearly two decades older than Kate, who is forty-seven. She reveals that her grandson, Charlie, vanished eleven years earlier and was never found. With his fate undetermined, Jean's daughter, Becky, could not cope with the loss of her son and took her own life seven years later. Becky blamed Jean for Charlie's disappearance because Jean and Charlie had gone camping with Becky and Charlie's father, Joel. Charlie was sleeping in Jean's tent, and Jean stepped outside intending to remain close by while she smoked a cigarette. But her on-again, off-again boyfriend of many years, Declan Connoly, showed up and Jean ventured further from the tent than originally planned in order to confront and deal with him. By the time she returned, Charlie was nowhere to be found. Along with Becky and Joel, Jean searched for Charlie for several hours before they reported his disappearance to the police and search parties were assembled.

The group was camping at fictional Devil's Way in the eastern portion of Dartmoor National Park. Author Robert Bryndza fashioned it after Dartmoor and Exeter where he spent summer holidays as a child. His detailed descriptions of the Devil's Way Tor (an imposing stack of rocks atop a grassy hillside), river, gorge, and a massive sink hole into which authorities suspected Charlie fell, whisk readers away to a beautiful, but mysterious and eerie setting. The area is isolated, and permeated with a sense of brooding and foreboding. There is even an imposing Pixie Tree to which fabric ribbons are affixed as offerings in hopes that wishes will be granted. It is easy to imagine a little boy waking up alone in a tent, frightened, and going looking for his grandmother but losing his way in the dark. Search dogs traced Charlie’s scent to the edge of the river but found no other clues to Charlie's whereabouts. Eventually, authorities stopped looking for Charlie.

Jean and Tristan agree to take the case with the knowledge that the chances of finding Charlie alive are virtually nonexistent. However, Kate is anxious to provide Jean the closure and peace she is seeking. Kate is moved by Jean’s plight -- she has lost both her only child and only grandchild.

Bryndza details Kate and Tristan's investigative steps, which include reviewing news articles about the case and the evidence amassed by authorities, as well as meetings with police personnel who were assigned to the case and other witnesses. They learn that Joel has moved on with his life -- he has remarried, has two young daughters, and operates a pub. Declan Connoly served time in prison and Charlie's blood was found in his car, but police were satisfied that Charlie cut his hand during an outing with Declan and Jean a few weeks prior to his disappearance. Oof course, they venture to Devil's Way to inspect the area where Charlie was last seen alive. They also visit the adjacent Danvers Farm and have a run-in with one of its residents. They learn that the prior tenants abruptly departed not long after Charlie went missing. They also discover that Jean was at odds with a social worker who was brutally murdered at around the same time. Could her blood-spattered notebook hold clues to Charlie's fate?

Once again, Bryndza has crafted a richly atmospheric, cleverly plotted story. He again demonstrates he is equally adept at the construction of complex and suspenseful mysteries, and character development. Kate is changed by her brush with death. She is mortified by her own vulnerability, embarrassed that she had to be rescued and owes her life to the surfers who pulled her from the water. She is also resolved not to let the experience change her lifestyle. Her relationship with Tristan is tested in new ways -- they have their first real disagreement -- as they work closely together, and Tristan expands his investigative skills with Kate’s mentoring.

They are surrounded by an eccentric and compelling cast of supporting characters, including Jean, the old-before-her-time grandmother who struggled with addiction, as well as a toxic romance from which she was unable to extract herself for far too long and her fractured relationship with her daughter. She is riddled with guilt about Charlie’s disappearance and Becky’s death and traumatized by both events. But her devotion to Charlie and grief over his loss seems genuine, so her failure to be forthright in her dealings with Jean and Tristan is puzzling. Tristan's old friend Ade makes an appearance, and his sister, Sarah, now a mother, continues to insert herself and her opinions into Tristan's personal life and professional relationship with Kate. But Tristan is maturing, growing more self-assured and assertive. In addition to Declan and Joel, readers get to know the reclusive Anna through characters with whom she interacted, including the officious and self-aggrandizing Maureen Cook, who ran the Cranborough Writers group of which Anna was a member. Maureen is a “large lady in her late fifties who seemed to have overdone it with the fake tan,” sports blue eye shadow, and loves cruises. She is hilariously proud of her “photostat copier” and dismayed at having been the target of a coup within the writing group.

As Kate and Tristan search for answers, Bryndza injects surprising revelations, red herrings, and shocking details about his characters' lives and behavior into an evenly paced and emotionally evocative narrative. Only well into the story will readers find themselves guessing, perhaps correctly, about Charlie's fate. Figuring out the mystery does not diminish the satisfaction of being privy to the various characters' reactions when the truth is unveiled, especially those who loved little Charlie Julings. Bryndza competently tackles difficult topics, including the devastation of sudden loss, the ongoing effects of grief and guilt, and mental illness in an absorbing, entertaining, and surprisingly moving tale in which he illustrates that sometimes the truth does indeed hide in the dark.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of those books that I didnt want to put down but also didnt want to finish. Gripping from start to finish, but what else do you expect from the Kate Marshall series?

Robert Bryndza has been one of my favourite crime writers, and his new novel did not disappoint. "Devil's Way" is my favourite Kate Marshall story to date!

In this novel, Kate and Tristan are trying to solve the disappearance of three-year-old Charlie. The characters are well-thawed out, and the plot is intriguing. I read it in one sitting! Bryndza knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat by peppering the story with enough twists and turns so you will not guess the whodunnit straight away.

Great author with the ability to keep you hooked and glued to the pages from the start. My only problem with this series and author is that it takes way to long for the next book in the series to be released. With a Kate Marshall book it is easy to remember where the last book ended and to continue reading the current book. I love the books, the characters, the writing style, just everything there is to like. I would recommend this book and series to everyone that loves so solve a crime, very well written. 5 stars

Another Kate Marshall and Tristan journey into a boy gone missing years ago. Very creepy people involved in this journey. Was a little disappointed in the ending but otherwise another good story from the author.

Another thrilling read from Robert Bryndza. The return of Kate and Tristan - I love this team. A gripping story with great twists. I envy everyone yet to read it.

I really enjoyed this book because it is so difficult for authors to come up with something different and, for me, this book was something a bit different.

Simple story, child vanished for more than a decade, grandmother meets private investigator, private investigator takes on the job of finding out what happened and from those premises the story builds and unfolds.

Certainly kept me page-turning and the interaction between all of the characters helped too. Just one too easy-peasy something knocked a star off my rating. That aside, it is a very worthwhile and enjoyable read as you will discover when you read the book for yourself.

You just can’t fault Robert Bryndza and his amazing imagination coming up with these plots .
So we’ll written and highly highly recommend reading ALL his books

What a pleasure it is to read a Robert Bryndza book. Devil’s Way is every bit as good – maybe better, but not by much because his previous books were already exceptional – as the last ones. It is another in the series with Private investigator, Kate Marshall. Tristan comes back into the story little by little. The two of them make a dynamic pair.
Kate befriends Jean who tells her the story of her missing grandson. Charlie went missing when he was three and would be about thirteen now. Kate and Tristan get to work solving this mystery. As usual, the writing is great, the storyline is outstanding, and the ending … well, I loved the ending. I think I’ve said this before in reviews of Mr. Bryndza’s work, but I’ll say it again. The characters are ‘human’ with their flaws and weaknesses, but not so much so that you’d roll your eyes. They are just not flawless super-heroes.
Thank you to NetGalley and Robert Bryndza for the opportunity to read and review Devil’s Way. I.Loved.It.

This was my first Kate Marshall book and I enjoyed it a lot. The characters were well written with a strong plot and realistic descriptions.

Another brilliant edition to the Kate Marshall series! Maybe I am biased, but Robert Bryndza books are always an instant buy. Kate is a fantastic character, along with her partner Tristan. I do enjoy that within the thriller, they have character development and you learn more about them. I breezed right through this one and eagerly await more from Robert Bryndza!

Thank you #RavenStreetPublishing , #RobertBryndza & #NetGalley for this free ebook in exchange for an honest review!

This was my first Kate and Tristan book, and will not be my last.
This was a great story, with believable characters and was well written.
Kate has a swimming accident and wakes up in hosptal where she meats Jean, who tells her a story from her past. A story where her grandson Charlie had disappeared on a camping trip on Dartmoor, and her daughter had killed herself after he was declared dead.
Kate finds herself drawn to the story, and once she is home from hospital, she learns that her business partner Tristan has heard from Jean's solicitor. Jean wants the duo to investigate Charlie's disappearance.
Where did he go? Was he taken? These are just a couple of questions that arise during their investigation.
The mystery deepens, and takes twists and turns that you wouldn't expect.
A great read, and I will look for more books about this investgative duo.

When Private Investigator Kate Marshall is rushed to hospital after being pulled into a riptide current in the sea, the near-death experience leaves her shaken. During her recovery, she befriends Jean, an elderly lady on the same ward. Jean tells the harrowing story of how her three-year-old grandson, Charlie, went missing eleven years ago during a camping trip on Dartmoor.
By the time Kate is well enough to go home, she's agreed to take on the case, but when Kate and her trusty sidekick Tristan start to look at the events of that fateful night, they discover that Jean has a dark past that could have put Charlie in jeopardy.
Was Charlie abducted? Or did he fall into Devil's Way? A rushing river that vanishes into a gorge close to where they were camping.
When Kate and Tristan discover that a social worker who flagged concerns about Jean and her daughter was found brutally murdered shortly after Charlie vanished, it makes them question everything they thought they knew about the family...

This is a wonderful addition to this thrilling series!
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believable.
Great suspense and action with wonderful world building that adds so much to the story.
Such a thrilling read that I couldn't put it down.
Can't wait to read more of these.
Recommend reading.

I was provided an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher. This is my own honest voluntary

I hadn’t read any of this series before however it was easily read and understood as a standalone.

I really enjoyed it, well written I will certainly go back and read th others in the series

Kate and Tristan make a great investigating duo and they go in deep into researching places and people to find out what happened to the 3-year-old boy who disappeared during a camping trip with his family. They are able to make connections between crimes considered unrelated in the past and unravel a much bigger crime than just a kidnapping. As usual, the author did not disappoint in providing his readers with an intriguing and engaging story!
I thank Mr. Bryndza, his publisher, and NetGalley for a copy of this book.