Unseen: A Novel Hardcover

I've finished "Unseen" by Karin Slaughter.

Karin Slaughter’s novels featuring detective Will Trent are utterly riveting and masterfully drawn. Her latest thriller, Unseen, pits detectives, lovers, and enemies against one another in an unforgettable standoff between righteous courage and deepest evil.

Will Trent is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent whose latest case has him posing as Bill Black, a scary ex-con who rides a motorcycle around Macon, Georgia, and trails an air of violence wherever he goes. The cover has worked and he has caught the eye of a wiry little drug dealer who thinks he might be a useful ally. But undercover and cut off from the support of the woman he loves, Sara Linton, Will finds his demons catching up with him.

Although she has no idea where Will has gone, or why, Sara herself has come to Macon because of a cop shooting: Her stepson, Jared, has been gunned down in his own home. Sara holds Lena, Jared’s wife, responsible: Lena, a detective, has been a magnet for trouble all her life, and Jared’s shooting is not the first time someone Sara loved got caught in the crossfire. Furious, Sara finds herself involved in the same case that Will is working without even knowing it, and soon danger is swirling around both of them.

In a novel of fierce intensity, shifting allegiances, and shocking twists, two investigations collide with a conspiracy straddling both sides of the law. Karin Slaughter’s latest is both an electrifying thriller and a piercing study of human nature: what happens when good people face the unseen evils in their lives.

Product Details
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (July 2, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345539478
ISBN-13: 978-0345539472

My Review:

GBI Special Agent Will Trent is working undercover as an ex-con to flush out Big Whitney who they believe is the head of an organization in Macon, Georgia. 

Macon P.D. Detective Lena Adams is hoping to catch a major player in Big Whitney's organization when she leads a raid on a house but no one is taken alive.  A few days later her motorcycle cop husband Jared is gunned down in their home which everyone blames Lena.

What's even worse is Jared's stepmom is Dr. Sara Linton who hates Lena's guts with a passion who she blames for her husband's Jeffrey's death.  She is extremely enraged and becomes entangled in the same case as Will's.

4/5

Criminal: A Novel [Hardcover]

I've finished "Criminal" the book in her Will Trent series by Karin Slaughter.

Karin Slaughter’s new novel is an epic tale of love, loyalty, and murder that encompasses forty years, two chillingly similar murder cases, and a good man’s deepest secrets.

Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before — when Will’s father was imprisoned for murder — this was his home.

Flash back nearly forty years. In the summer Will Trent was born, Amanda Wagner is going to college, making Sunday dinners for her father, taking her first steps in the boys’ club that is the Atlanta Police Department. One of her first cases is to investigate a brutal crime in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Amanda and her partner, Evelyn, are the only ones who seem to care if an arrest is ever made.

Now the case that launched Amanda’s career has suddenly come back to life, intertwined with the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage. And these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.
About the Author

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of twelve thrillers, including Fallen, Broken, Undone, Fractured, Beyond Reach, Triptych, and Faithless. She is a native of Georgia.


Product Details
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (July 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345528506
ISBN-13: 978-0345528506

My Review:

Will Trent is a brilliant investigator working for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and has finally found true love.  He is dyslexic, scarred psychically and psychologically from living in the streets and orphanages.  His marriage to Angie a fellow orphan has caused Will terrible grief and misery.  He has fallen for Sara Linton a brilliant pediatrician even though he is still married to Angie.

This book alternates between the 1974 - 1975 to present day.  This book opens with a group of drug addicted prostitutes who are at the mercy of a brute pimp who keeps most of the money for himself.  Nineteen year old Lucy Bennett was once a very promising student but she started taking speed to lose weight.  Then she switched to amphetamine and her life spiraled downhill from there.  Her hair has been falling out and now she is another street walker with dead eyes.

The villain is a shadowy and humongous Christian who is obsessively to controlling the prostitutes he kidnaps. The way he tortures them is very graphically described and brutally scary.

In 174 - 1975 Amanda Wagner was on her first case with the honestly pushy opinionated Eve Mitchell (Faith's mother) trying to figure out who is killing prostitutes by brutal means.  We are treated to the sexism, racism and corruption that was present during the police department during this time period.

4/5

ARC Review: Fallen: A Novel [Hardcover]

I've finished "Fallen" the 3rd book in her Georgia series by Karin Slaughter.

Product Description

There’s no police training stronger than a cop’s instinct. Faith Mitchell’s mother isn’t answering her phone. Her front door is open. There’s a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. All that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations taught Faith Mitchell goes out the window when she charges into her mother’s house, gun drawn. She sees a man dead in the laundry room. She sees a hostage situation in the bedroom. What she doesn’t see is her mother . . . .

“You know what we’re here for. Hand it over, and we’ll let her go.”

When the hostage situation turns deadly, Faith is left with too many questions, not enough answers. To find her mother, she’ll need the help of her partner, Will Trent, and they’ll both need the help of trauma doctor Sara Linton. But Faith isn’t just a cop anymore — she’s a witness. She’s also a suspect.

The thin blue line hides police corruption, bribery, even murder. Faith will have to go up against the people she respects the most in order to find her mother and bring the truth to light — or bury it forever. 

Karin Slaughter’s most exhilarating novel yet is a thrilling journey through the heart and soul, where the personal and the criminal collide, and conflicted loyalties threaten to destroy reputations and ruin lives. It is the work of a master of the thriller at the top of her game, and a whirlwind of unrelenting suspense.


Product Details
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press (June 21, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345528204
ISBN-13: 978-0345528209

My Review:

Storyline:  GBI Investigator Faith Mitchell arrives at her mother's house after work to pick up her baby daughter, only to find her daughter locked in the tool shed, her mother missing, and several gang members occupying her mother's house which turns into a bloody battlefield. Faith's formidable boss, Amanda Wagner, arrives and butts head with the Atlanta Police Department over jurisdiction which was a hoot. Amanda and Will pursue their investigation, as do the Atlanta Police Department and Faith tries to pursue her own investigation and find her mother while keeping her son and daughter safe.

Also it showcases Will Trent's early years when he investigated Faith's mother for corruption and arrested many of the men in her squad. The book also deals with an abundance of former police officers who have been or still are imprisoned and a group of gang members. As usual Amanda knows more than she's telling but she  suffocates Will more than usual under her manipulation of him and the people around him.
Characters:  Angie is quite the monster in this book because she taunts Sara that Will wouldn't hurt himself like he did for her.  All the characters are well written and you learn some things about Faith's mother.

Romance: I really enjoy the romance between Sara and Will because they are really attracted to each other but are awkward around each other.  You finally see some bedroom action between the two but the way Will treats Sara afterwards .....

Killer(s):  The main killer had a group of friends who listened and did what ever their friend told them to do.  This person blamed Faith's mother and was jealous of Faith and her kids so they retaliated by torturing and trying to kill the whole family.  This is one sick freak!

4/5

Thanks Authors on the Web and Random House for sending me this ARC to review, greatly appreciated!

ARC Review: Broken: A Novel (Grant County) [Hardcover]

I've finished "Broken" the 2nd book in her Georgia series by Karin Slaughter.

Product Description

Karin Slaughter’s internationally bestselling novels are as notable for their vivid portraits of lives shadowed by loss and heartbreak as they are for their dramatic criminal investigations. Her latest offering features the return of her most compelling characters and introduces memorable new ones in a tale of corruption, murder, and confrontation that will leave more than one life . . .

When Special Agent Will Trent arrives in Grant County, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner’s death. He doesn’t understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him. He doesn’t understand her role in the death of Grant County’s popular police chief. He doesn’t understand why that man’s widow, Dr. Sara Linton, needs him now more than ever to help her crack this case.

While the police force investigates the murder of a young woman pulled from a frigid lake, Trent investigates the police force, putting pressure on Adams just when she’s already about to crack. Caught between two complicated and determined women, trying to understand Linton’s passionate distrust of Adams, the facts surrounding Chief Tolliver’s death, and the complexities of this insular town, Trent will unleash a case filled with explosive secrets — and encounter a thin blue line that could be murderous if crossed.

Spellbinding and keenly paced, Broken is Karin Slaughter at her best. Here is an unforgettable story of raw emotions, dangerous assumptions, the deadly and layered game of betrayal, and a man’s determination to expose the most painful of human truths — no matter how deeply they’re hidden . . . or how devastating.

About the Author

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of ten thrillers, including Undone, Beyond Reach, Triptych, and Faithless. She is a native of Georgia.

Product Details
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press; 1 edition (June 22, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385341970
ISBN-13: 978-0385341974


My Review:

It has been three and a half years since pediatrician and former Grant County, Georgia, coroner Sara Linton has been home. That’s when she lost her husband, the town’s much beloved police chief. Things have only gone downhill in that department since Jeffrey Tolliver died. Officer Lena Adams is getting sick of turning a blind eye to her new boss’ alcoholism and the department’s increasing willingness to stray from the rule book. When a mentally disabled murder suspect commits suicide in a jail cell, Sara, convinced that a mishandled interrogation led the boy to take his own life, calls in Special Agent Will Trent. She also sees it as a perfect way to get back at Lena, whom she blames for her husband’s death.

I really don't like Frank Lena's boss since he drinks on the job and is usually drunk and falling down.  He also has a habit of hurting people when arresting them, etc.

Lena is a very complicated women because she had a very abusive childhood and relationships.  She's the reason why Sara's husband Jeffrey was killed (she was involved with a drug dealer).  She's now involved with Jeffrey's son Jared a rookie cop which Sara disapproves of.

I really like Sara because she's very kind-hearted and really loved Jeffrey (even though he cheated on her) and he loved her too.  I feel for her when she lost Jeffrey three and a half years ago.  She really hates Lena even since the first book and thought she should have been fired a long time ago.

I really like Will because he's a great investigator and cares for Sara (he's attracted to her) but he's still married but it's a complicated one.

You can see the sparks between Trent and Sara and you really want them to get together.

Really happy to see Faith Will's partner helping him out from the sidelines (she's pregnant).

4/5