Book Review: THE SILENT WIFE

THE SILENT WIFE: A NOVEL (Will Trent Series #10)
HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: Karin Slaughter
ISBN: 978-0-06-285810-8; paperback; 6x9in. (August 4, 2020)
496pp, B&W, $28.99 U.S., $35.99 CAN

The Silent Wife: A Novel is a 2020 crime novel from American crime writer, Karin Slaughter.  The Silent Wife is the tenth novel in Slaughter's “Will Trent Series,” which stars Will Trent, a special agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).  Another star characters is Sara Linton, a doctor and medical examiner from Slaughter's “Grant County” novels.  The Silent Wife finds Trent and Dr. Linton investigating a possible serial killer in a case that connects to Sara's late husband.

The Silent Wife finds the GBI investigating the killing of a prisoner, 38-year-old Jesus Rodrigo Vasquez, during a riot inside Phillips State Prison, a medium security state penitentiary in Buford, Georgia, not far from Atlanta.  During the investigation, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information.  One of the inmates, Daryl Nesbitt, claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack on college student, Rebecca “Becky” Caterino, eight years earlier, for which he has always been the prime suspect.  Nesbitt, imprisoned for possessing child pornography, insists that he was framed by the corrupt law enforcement city police department of Heartsdale in Grant County.  The primary target of Nesbitt's accusation is Sara Linton's late husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, the former chief of Heartsdale.

Nesbitt claims that the real culprit in the attack on Becky Caterino is still out there – a serial killer who has systematically been preying on women across the state for years.  If Will reopens the investigation and implicates the dead police officer with a hero’s reputation of wrongdoing, the opportunistic Nesbitt says that he is willing to provide the information GBI needs about the riot murder of Vasquez and about an illegal phone distribution system inside the prison.

Only recently, another young woman, Alexandra McAllister, was found viciously murdered in a state park in northern Georgia.  Is it a fluke? Or could there be a serial killer on the loose?  Will realizes that he will have to crack a cold case to catch a killer that still might be active.  Will needs his girlfriend and Jeffrey Tolliver's widow, Sara, to help him hunt down a possible serial killer.  But when the past and present begin to collide, Will realizes that everything he values is at stake . . .

THE LOWDOWN:  I read a “galley copy” of The Silent Wife that William Morrow's marketing department provided to book reviewers and bloggers.  So this edition contains a kind of introduction and also a kind of afterword in which author Karin Slaughter emphasizes to readers that she decided to write a novel that was frank about violence against women.

Last year, I read Slaughter's novel, Pieces of Her, a most delicious read that was also filled with dangerous plot twists and crazy-ass characters.  The Silent Wife easily surpasses Pieces of Her in terms of being a pot boiler thriller that is demented fun to read.  That the killer is a sadistic freak, a savage rapist, and monstrous killer of women did not make me forget that the novel was trying to convey the reality of the almost casual threats of violence and actual violence that many women and girls face everyday.  One of the many things that Slaughter expertly gets across to her readers in The Silent Wife is the everlasting physical and psychological damage that women suffer as a result of the violence done to them by males.

And The Silent Wife is still a great entry in the suspense and mystery genres.  Slaughter does not have to preach to you, dear readers.  She simply crashes into your imagination with a mind-bending plot and superbly executed narrative – with a real-world purpose.  The Silent Wife is one of the best mystery thriller that you will read this year or any year.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of crime thrillers and of Karin Slaughter will want to read The Silent Wife.

10 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


https://www.karinslaughter.com/
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The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: PIECES OF HER

PIECES OF HER
HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow – @HarperCollins; @WmMorrowBks

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: Karin Slaughter – @SlaughterKarin
ISBN: 978-0-06-288309-4; paperback; 5.31 in x 8.00 in (May 21, 2019)
494pp, B&W, $16.99 U.S., $21.00 CAN

Pieces of Her is a 2018 novel by author Karin Slaughter.  It was published in hardcover by William Morrow (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers) in August 2018, and the first trade paperback edition was released May 2019.  It is the paperback edition, a review copy of which I received from the publisher, that is the subject of this review, dear readers.  A thriller, Pieces of Her focuses on a young woman forced to grapple with this question:  What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all?

Pieces of Her introduces Andrea “Andy” Eloise, a 31-year-old woman who is adrift in life.  She left New York City and her dreams of being an artist to return to her hometown of Belle Isle, Georgia.  There, she took care for her mother, Laura Oliver, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.  A few years later, Andy is still in Belle Isle, now a 911 operator.

On Andy's 31st birthday, Andy and Laura are having lunch at a local diner, “Rise-n-Dine,” located in the Mall of Belle Isle.  During the birthday meal, something unthinkable happens that will forever change Andy's life.  A young man starts shooting people in the diner.  Almost as shocking is the fact that Laura Oliver tries to talk the young man down and stop him from shooting more people, before she violently disposes of him as threat.  WTF, indeed?

Andy thought she knew her mother.  Laura Oliver is the woman who has spent her whole life in a beach-side town.  She is the woman who always wanted to do nothing more than live a quiet life as a pillar of the community... isn't she?  However, video of the mall incident has exposed Laura to her enemies from her past... because before Laura Oliver was Laura Oliver, she was someone else entirely.  Andy even wonders about her stepfather, Gordon Oliver.  What does he know?  Now, on the run, Andy follows a trail of crumbs from her mother's past, and she has to uncover the truth about Laura Oliver's past if her and her mother want to have a future.

I recently read my first Karin Slaughter book, the most excellent police procedural/crime thriller, The Last Widow, which was published just this past August (2019).  Like that book, Pieces of Her is a multi-genre thriller, so it is hard to pin it down to being one kind of novel.

The Library of Congress catalog for Pieces of Her (included on the copyright and indicia page at the front of the book) describes this book using the following categories of fiction: mothers and daughters, violence, identity (psychology), family secrets, mystery and detective, police procedural, women sleuths, and suspense.  Pieces of Her is all of that and more.  It is like a box of chocolates from the mystery genre candy-maker.  There is something for every reader who ever read a story about a character trying to unravel a mystery – whether that character was civilian, amateur, or professional mystery solver and “untangler” of secrets.

Like I was with The Last Widow, I am determined to spoil as little as possible of Pieces of Her.  After she has her character, Laura Oliver, kill the mall shooter, author Karin Slaughter reveals a past for Laura that is so shocking and unexpected that the readers might rightly think that Slaughter is dealing with a character entirely separate from Laura.  Initially, I thought so; then, I was so shocked at what Slaughter slapped in my face that I hoped the past Laura was not the same as the Laura at the beginning of the novel.  If that were not enough, Slaughter sends Andy on a breathtaking, pulse-pounding, and sometimes blood-chilling misadventure in uncovering secrets.

While this novel does have a few dry spots, to describe Pieces of Her as a good read is liking describing a cancer diagnosis as bad news.  Yes, both are true, but they are also enormous understatements.  If you want to read a thriller that beats your imagination into submission, then, read Pieces of Her.

9 out of 10

https://www.karinslaughter.com/

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2019 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: THE LAST WIDOW

THE LAST WIDOW
HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow – @HarperCollins @WmMorrowBks

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: Karin Slaughter – @SlaughterKarin
ISBN: 978-0-06-285808-2; hardcover (August 20, 2019)
464pp, B&W, $27.99 U.S., $34.99 CAN

The Last Widow is a 2019 novel from American crime writer, Karin Slaughter.  She is an international bestselling author who has sold millions of books in a multitude of languages around the world.  The Last Widow stars the lead character from each of Slaughter's two book series.

The first is Will Trent, a special agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the star of the “Will Trent” series.  The second is Sara Linton, a doctor and medical examiner from Slaughter's “Grant County” novels.  The Last Widow finds Will and Sara trying to unravel the mystery of a impending terrorist attack that will take place somewhere in or around Atlanta, Georgia.

The Last Widow opens with three shocking events.  First, on Sunday, July 7, 2019, Michelle Spivey, a scientist, is kidnapped from a shopping center parking lot one night while she is out with her daughter.  On August 4, 2019, two explosions rock the campus of Emory University, a 600+ acre-complex that is the home of two major hospitals and also government agencies and institutes, including the FBI headquarters and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

George Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent and the love of his life, Dr. Sara Linton, head for the scene the explosions in order to help civilians, each in the way he or she has been trained to do.  However, what they first rush into is the scene of a multi-car accident.  Sara immediately finds something peculiar about the accident scene, but by the time Will catches on to the oddities, Sara is in the clutches of a small group of highly-skilled and armed men.

After the assailants abduct Sara, Will throws himself into the case and goes undercover, putting his life on the line to save the woman he loves and to discover the kidnappers' plot, which may endanger the entire nation.  Meanwhile, in the clutches of an extremist group, the Invisible Patriot Army (IPA), Sara meets the mysterious leader, a man known as “Dash,” who plans an attack that will rock the United States.  But Sara can't quite figure out Dash's machinations, and she is running out of time and is hoping that Will can save her.

I have seen Karin Slaughter's name in book club magazines, on bookstore shelves, and in the emails online bookseller send me for more years than I can remember.  The Last Widow is the first book of hers that I have read – thanks to a review galley copy I received from her publisher.  After finishing The Last Widow, I realize that I should have been reading her books years ago.

The Last Widow is a crime thriller the way that Shakespeare's Hamlet is a historical drama – both defy convenient literary labels.  The Last Widow is every post-9/11 nightmare blended into all three NCIS series, flavored with the police procedural, and a sprinkling of books, TV, and films about the FBI (which is practically a genre onto itself).

I am determined not to spoil neither the intricacies of this novel's narrative nor the ultimate diabolical design of Dash and the IPA.  I will say that The Last Widow is pulse-pounding, ass-pounding, and heart-stopping.  Warning!  Reading it may cause sphincters to clinch.  Everything about it – from the tactics of the heroes to the evil of the villains seems so real-life.  Karin Slaughter offers a scenario so plausible that writing The Last Widow should get her put on some kind of FBI watch-list.

For all that makes this novel a potboiler, The Last Widow is filled with sparkling wit and pointed social commentary from a writer who is as witty and as sly as she is versed in the ways of law enforcement.  Religious extremism, racism, and the Confederacy and segregation are among Slaughter's targets.  Also, fans of her “Will Trent” series can take comfort that series regulars like Faith Mitchell and Amanda Wagner are supporting characters in The Last Widow.

Fans of her novels cannot let The Last Widow get past them.  Readers of the genre known as “crime thriller” will want to discover Karin Slaughter and this absolutely fantastic novel.  It may be the most explosive way to finish your summer reading.

9 out of 10

https://www.karinslaughter.com/

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You'


The text is copyright © 2019 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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