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Suspense author Karin Slaughter, she with a bent for gory and violent detail, comes from an unusual background in comparison with most best-selling crime fiction writers of today. She used to be a commercial signmaker. That is ironic in that one of her three main protagonists, Jeffrey Tolliver, was unfaithful to his wife, Sara Linton, with a signwriter. It gives one to think! Slaughter has written about her trio, Sara, chief of police Jeffrey and Lena Adams, a detective, for longer than they have starred in full length novels. They sprang fully formed, so to speak, to life in the author's first book, Blindsighted continuing on their bloody paths in the second novel, Kisscut and remain assailed by fate in A Faint Cold Fear. I would be interested to discover Slaughter's educational background and the inspiration for her writing but, unfortunately, I have so far been unable to unearth information which I would consider interesting. Sara Linton is a paediatrician as well as part time coroner in Grant County, Georgia - an unlikely combination. She is summoned to a crime scene by her former husband Jeffrey and, since her younger sister, heavily pregnant plumber Tessa is with her, takes her along as well. She regrets this decision when Tessa, obeying the urgent call Nature inflicts on all heavily pregnant women, to urinate, is attacked and left for dead. The assault changes the immediate description of the death of a boy, a student at the college, from suicide to a possible murder. Later, the body of the woman student who found the first corpse is discovered, also an apparent suicide. The third member of the protagonist trio, Lena Adams, has recently joined the security staff of the college and is, therefore, involved in the investigation although only as the minion of sleazy Chuck Gaines, chief of college security. In a previous book, Lena has been kidnapped and had her hands and feet nailed apart, handily, so her kidnapper has immediate and easy access to her for purposes of rape. Jeffrey has insisted that Lena obtain psychiatric help but Lena resists and finds herself out of the police force, seeking solace in alcohol. Lena, Jeffrey and Sara are all rather contrary characters and Lena has, in secret, been seeing the college psychiatrist who is the mother of the dead boy. True to Slaughter's earlier oeuvres, this book is saturated with gore and littered withcarnage. I really don't see that the minute and loving detail with which she decorates her pages is necessary to the plot. Other (to my mind) more talented authors produce superior books without finding it necessary to shock the reader with such colourful descriptions. I find, too that Lena, Sara and Jeffrey are not the most attractive of people. In this book Lena, hell-bent on self destruction, is even more antagonistic than in earlier adventures as she finds herself suspected of complicity in the crimes. She is not helped by becoming involved with a male student Of course, if the reader is addicted to pace and violence, and enjoys the adventures of unsympathetic characters with very great problems and has been attracted by this author's earlier work, no doubt there will be great appeal to be found in this novel.
Reviewed by Denise Wels, September 2003
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