Fear The Silence is a stand-alone novel by award-winning, best-selling British author, Robert Bryndza. Even when the pathologist tells Senior Registrar at Guys’ Hospital, Dr Maggie Kendall that he pulled the trigger, she refuses to believe that her husband Will took his own life. They bury him on what would have been their twenty-fourth anniversary, but even if she didn’t know him as well as she believed, Maggie knows that Will was not suicidal.

Both of those prove true. When she heads to their Croatian Island holiday home to sort out his things, a letter from Will indicates that he anticipated his death, and sends her hunting for an explanation. The letter was written six years earlier, at the same time as Will gave up his career as a forensic pathologist to become a property developer, and also when he bought a gun.

At their fully digitised house in Tisina, suddenly too many incidents endanger her life and she’s desperate to return to London, where a close friend doing her a favour has also come to grief. It’s starting to look like Will’s legacy is quite the poisoned chalice. Getting off the island, at first straightforward, unexpectedly becomes much more of a challenge, and going back to the UK may be the right thing to do, but is it safe?

Bryndza gives the reader a tightly plotted thriller with a hefty body count courtesy of some very nasty killers. It’s a dark and twisty tale, although some aspects will need the reader to don their disbelief suspenders.

Fear the Silence is a gripping standalone thriller from the author of the well-loved Erika Foster and Kate Marshall series.

London trauma doctor Maggie Kendall's life is turned on its head when her husband Will dies suddenly and violently, and to make a horrible situation even worse, it quickly becomes clear that police regard his death as a suicide. Left reeling, Maggie retreats to the holiday home she and Will shared on the (fictional) Croatian island of Tišina. That's when things start getting creepy... Maggie receives a mysterious letter from beyond the grave from Will, indicating that there's more to his recent death than authorities realise. A couple of inexplicable but life-threatening incidents occur before Will's best friend turns up on his yacht. As the island is cut off by a storm, Maggie's caught up in a spine-chilling struggle to solve the mystery of Will's death, while not falling victim to the same malevolent force herself.

The tightly-plotted story contains a well-balanced combination of suspense, shocking twists and political intrigue, which kept me on the edge of my seat until the end. Robert Bryndza captures the main character’s emotional torment, fear and determination phenomenally well, resulting in a thriller that will have a visceral effect on readers. The setting on an island off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia is inspired by the author's own experience of holidaying in Baška on the island of Krk and elsewhere in Croatia. He evocatively relates the dramatic scenery, isolation and wild weather of the Adriatic in winter.

I'd highly recommend Fear the Silence to existing fans of Robert Bryndza's crime fiction, but also as a perfect starting point for those who are yet to delve into his work, given that it's a standalone.

My thanks to the author, Robert Bryndza, publisher Raven Street Publishing, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this exciting title.

I loved the initial feel of this story and was on the edge of my seat anxious to know where it was going. However, once it moved full steam ahead into the mystery with a bit of evidence here and there, it soon lost its dark, intriguing quality. While it settled into a nice enough mystery, I found it to be somewhat ordinary. There was a small twist but nothing that shook me. Overall, this was an enjoyable enough read and would have been even more so had I not had different expectations of it.