Just Jennifer

Criminal by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte, July 2012)

Karin Slaughter brings back Will Trent, Amanda Wagner and Dr. Sara Linton in her latest novel that flashes back to Amanda’s early years on the force and tells the story of how Will went from being a dyslexic ward of the state to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent.   The setting deftly switches back and forth between the mid-1970’s when two young women were murdered and the present day when a co-ed has disappeared, bearing an eerie similarity to the earlier cases.  Sara and Will are in the early stages of a relationship, Will still married to, though separated from and mostly estranged from, his childhood protector, the ever psychotic Angie who continues to stalk Will and Sara, leaving Sara threatening notes almost daily on her windshield.  As Amanda and her partner Faye investigate the murders in the seventies, they are unwittingly telling Will’s story and his family history, a history Sara knows very little of; she is patient with Will and wants him to tell the story in his own time, but before long, his past comes crashing into the present with alarming speed and surprising results and when it seems that all is said and done, Amanda and Angie each have one last surprise for everyone.  Will and Sara have been readers’ favorites for a long time, in their individual series and when they have helped each other out on cases in the past, but Criminal throws then together in new and intimate ways, exposing Will, and Amanda, in ways that make them even more realized than before.  Add a break neck pace and murder investigations spanning four decades and this is one of Slaughter’s best books to date.