Author Karin Slaughter has sliced and diced her way into the nightmares of millions with her best-selling, page- turning thrillers, including “Beyond Reach” and “Faithless.”
Her latest effort, “Fractured,” also will have readers burning the midnight oil, both because they can’t stop reading and because they’ll be afraid to turn off the lights.
The action begins on a quiet suburban street in upper-class Atlanta, where privileged society matron Abigail Campano walks into her home to see a blood-soaked man holding a knife over her teenage daughter’s dead body. In a fit of maternal rage and self-preservation, Abigail strangles the man with her bare hands.
It’s a startling opening and Slaughter doesn’t let her readers pause for breath before turning everything on its head.
Hardly anyone in this vivid scene is who he seems to be, and the consequences of Abigail’s actions keep spinning through the almost 400 pages of the novel.
And, not to give away one twist of the intricate plot, but the murders fall way down on the priority list when events really get humming in this mystery featuring Special Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a returning character from Slaughter’s “Triptych.”
Slaughter’s plots are labyrinthine, coiling and twisting around and around, crossing back over and intersecting, then coiling around again. Some elements will strain credulity, but no more than any other thriller. And the author’s of-the-moment societal observations are spot-on: “Somewhere in New York City,” she writes of the media melee that begins over the crimes, “a Lifetime movie executive was drooling into her BlackBerry.” The author isn’t all gory scenes and glib asides, though. She doesn’t make light of the crimes in her novels, crystallizing the anguish felt by victims’ families in a few well-crafted paragraphs.
Slaughter’s work isn’t for the squeamish, but she has more emotional heft than other writers in her genre, and it gives her a wide appeal.
This is just an author who does her research and uses it to flesh out the story. As a storyteller, Slaughter is a master at creating tension and hooking readers. And, as fans can attest, there are no sacred cows in her novels.
FICTION
Fractured
, by Karin Slaughter, $25
