Criminal by Karin Slaughter

Read by Kathleen Early

Will Trent #7

            It took me a while to get into this book. It is extremely well written, however, so despite feeling a bit leery at first, I kept listening. This is the first book I've read by Slaughter. She did such an amazing job of describing the descent of a typical middle class teenager into drugs and prostitution that I could easily imagine how the same thing could have happened to me. The story was gritty and real and made me very uncomfortable. I wasn't sure I wanted to listen to things like that for the several days it takes me to get through an audio book. But I could not walk away from such a compelling writer's work.

            While this series is about Will Trent, the story is about the first major case solved by his boss, Amanda, decades earlier. Prostitutes and had been disappearing in Atlanta.  But since no one was particularly interested in what happened to streetwalkers, no one realized there was a pattern, until Amanda and her partner are asked to go into the projects and interview a woman about a rape. There, they hear a story about girls gone missing.

            A few days later, the woman they spoke to is found dead on the pavement behind her building, an apparent suicide jump. But the facts of the case do not add up, and Amanda and her partner start looking into the deaths and disappearances.  They get almost as much grief from their fellow cops, at least the male ones, as they do from the criminal element. But they persevere, eventually, putting a serial killer behind bars. That serial killer was also Will Trent’s father.

            Now, daddy has been paroled and more girls come up missing mere weeks after he is back on the streets. Will is being blocked from investigating by his boss, Amanda. He is confused, angry and filled with mounting frustration. Amanda, too, is not happy about the situation. Not all her questions had been answered by the man’s arrest so long ago, and as she once again begins to investigate, she finds she did not completely clean up the mess she found as a green detective. This time around, though, there are no loose ends left hanging.

            I really liked this book. Yes, it made me very uncomfortable at times. But I was riveted. I regularly listen to an audio book for half an hour or so after I get off work at midnight, before I go to bed. I had several very late nights during this story, because I had trouble turning it off. I just had to hear a little more!