Number 59 - Broken - Karin Slaughter

 

Karin Slaughter must be the most appropriately named writer in history.  She writes gruesome crime/police procedurals featuring some spectacularly messy crime scenes. 

One of the best things about her books is that you have no idea who will actually survive, or how much will be left of them. This is no exception, and I was convinced that yet another of her regular characters was about to meet a nasty end.  Whether they did I'm not going to say.

I'm a bit late to the party here.  There are about 6 more in this series already.  In this book she manages to say goodbye to Grant County as the central location.  Despite Sara having left Grant County a few books previously, she hadn't truly said goodbye to the town or made peace with some of its inhabitants.  

This opens with a young student murdered by the lake just before Sara returns to her parents' house for Thanksgiving.  The prime suspect for the killing is arrested and confesses.  However he then kills himself in the jail cell and writes "Not me" on the wall in his blood as he dies.

Sara has a very personal grudge against Lena Adams, the arresting officer and calls in Will Trent from the GBI to investigate the deaths. Lena and Sara are both characters we sympathise with. Putting the antagonism between the two heroes (flawed as they may be) creates a huge amount of tension at the heart of the book. 

The story moves at a cracking pace and, as previously mentioned, we don't know who will live till the end of the book.  Sara and Will are both in the sequels so they're in the clear, but the rest of the cast don't have that luxury. I suppose if I'd read this when it came out, I wouldn't have had even that reassurance.

The plotting is as strong as ever, with the various plot threads pulling together to reach a satisfying conclusion. I'm not sure it would be possible to pick out the murderer early on in this but that's not a bad thing. It's a procedural as much as it is a detective story and the journey to the solution is as important as the answers to the questions. The pieces of the puzzle are carefully laid out and there's a lot of pleasure to be had from working out various character's motivations.

If I was to criticise it, maybe there was a bot too much luck (both bad and good) involved in the eventual unmasking of the killer, but that's a minor quibble. 

This is a worthy goodbye to Grant County.  i will be sure to continue with the series sooner rather than later.