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Dr Sara Linton is on an enforced sabbatical due to a medical malpractice lawsuit against her. It seems the good citizens of Heartsdale have forgotten all of the good that Sara has done over the years and want to believe the worst of her. Thus, they are staying away from her office in droves. When her husband Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver gets called out of town she decides to go with him. One of his detectives, Lena Adams, is – in Sara’s opinion – constantly getting in trouble and dragging Jeffrey down with her. Perhaps even some readers of the series might agree with that assessment. Lena has been arrested in her old hometown and Jeffrey is going to her rescue. He believes implicitly in Lena’s qualities as a good cop, but Sara is harder to convince. A car had exploded and burned and an unidentified body was in the backseat. Lena is refusing to talk; she won’t say what part, if any, she had in the event or who was in the car when it burned. And her uncle Hank is missing and unaccounted for, which is also suspicious. The author, who herself grew up in a small town in South Georgia, has created a fictional Grant County for her series characters to inhabit. This is the sixth book in the highly acclaimed series. While it is always a good thing to read any series in order, these books are all so well written that they stand alone. However, it would help to have background on Lena and her antagonistic relationship with her maternal uncle. Many things which Lena has believed to be truths are turning out to have been lies and she is having trouble dealing with this. As usual, Sara and Jeffery are wonderfully drawn characters, as are the secondary characters. In this novel, which deals partially with the proliferation of meth in small towns everywhere, there are some very evil people and the reader gets the shivers just meeting them on the page. Every detail in Slaughter’s books has a purpose; there is nothing, whether the simplest action or conversation that is unnecessary. The reader is propelled headlong into the action, usually on the first page – the books just grab you and never let go. Sometimes long-running series start to get stale, but there is no danger of that with this author. She never fails to surprise, shock and amaze her readers. Slaughter is unafraid of taking chances either in her writing or in stunning her readers as she does in BEYOND REACH.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, July 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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