Murder and Mayhem in Rural Georgia

A few years back, I started reading a series by Karin Slaughter. The book I picked up was actually the second in the series (hate it when that happens) but it was so good I read it and then went back and got the first book. Now I patiently await Ms. Slaughter's newest offering each summer. The series, Grant County is named for a fictional county in Georgia. The main characters are Sara Linton, a pediatrician who also serves as the county's medical examiner which puts her in constant contact with her ex-husband Jeffrey Tolliver who is the sheriff of Grant County. Their marriage ended several years earlier when she came home early one day to discover him in bed with another woman. Aside from the various crimes that go on in this county such as a kiddie porn ring, meth trafficking, white supremacist groups, religious cults and a hostage situation at the sheriff's office we see Jeffrey and Sara grow closer and give their marriage a second chance. Another major character in the series is Detective Lena Adams. Lena is Jeffrey's protege but she has a chip on her shoulder being a woman in a field dominated by men. She feels she has to be tougher than everyone else and is often abrasive, especially in her dealings with Sara. Lena is the opposite of Sara in that she didn't grow up with a traditional family. Her parents died when she was young leaving her and her blind twin sister in the care of their drug-addicted uncle. In the first book Blindsighted, Lena's sister is found murdered in the bathroom of a diner. As medical examiner, Sara finds similarities to a crime perpetrated against herself while she was completing her medical training in Atlanta. The rest of the series is as follows: Kisscut, A Faint Cold Fear, Indelible, Faithless and Beyond Reach.

In 2006, the author began a second series around a minor character from some of the Grant County books named Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. This second series is set in Atlanta. The first book Triptych deals with a serial killer on the loose. There is a twist to this book near the beginning that caught me off guard, but made it that much more interesting. Slaughter has a talent for creating characters that you care about and this book is full of them. John Shelley was sent to prison as a teenager for the brutal murder of a school friend while he was on drugs. He always maintained his innocence and the only person who ever believed in him was his mother. He suffered a great deal in prison and was recently parolled. He wants to make a new life for himself, but someone is trying to frame him for these new crimes. He must find out who it is and somehow find out what really happened all those years ago. Will Trent is a tall, lanky aloof sort that no one really knows how to deal with but he is really good at his job. His demeanor helps him to hide the fact that he is dyslexic and his childhood left him feeling separated from other people. He grew up in an orphanage after being taken from his abusive father. He was never adopted but was always hopeful. His only friend is a fellow survivor of the orphanage, vice cop Angie Pulaski who lost hope early on and became bitter. Angie and Will share a bond and can always count on each other. The second book in this series is Fractured which centers around the murder of one teenage girl, the disappearance of another and the fatal shooting of an innocent young man thought to be the perpetrator in an upscale Atlanta neighborhood. In this book, Will is paired with Atlanta PD Detective Faith Mitchell. She resents being assigned to work the case with the enigmatic Will. Faith, like Lena in the Grant County series has a chip on her shoulder as well. She is in her early thirties but is the mother of a college-aged son. As they work the case, they develop mutual respect and she discovers his secret but doesn't expose him. It looks like Faith will be Will's partner in future books.

Undone is Karen Slaughter's latest and it will be released on July 14, 2009. It looks like characters from both series work together on a case. I can't say more without giving away what happened in the last Grant County book, but I'm really looking forward to it.