keep the faith..... (Faithless - Karin Slaughter)

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	Faithless - Karin Slaughter
Date:	17/08/06 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: gripping from start to finish

Disadvantages: none as you would expect from such a high calibre author

Fresh on the heels of her last bestseller comes Faithless,another in her series set in Grant County once again featuring local paedatrican/coroner Sara Linton and her ex husband police chief,Jeffrey Tolliver.

When Sara and Jeffrey are walking in the woods behind her parent's home,arguing as per usual,they literally stumble across the body of a young girl apparently buried alive in a home-made coffin.The girl,now dead,appears to have suffered great distress before she died judging from the scratches on the inside of the coffin but whoever buried her had obviously not intended her to die as they have provided her with bottled water and containers for her to urinate or defecate in as needed.Whas more,the girl was pregnant-which has personal ramifications for Sara considering her past...

Trying to track down the identity of the dead girl leads Jeffrey to an isolated farm manned by what appears to be a highly religious family cult-the same family that Sara's sister has recently been attending church with.From there,things become curioser and curioser and leads to many secrets and lies that previously have reamined buried finally coming to the surface.

Wheras the last novel,Indelible,focused heavily on the relationship betweeen Sara and Jeffrey with its multiple flashbacks to their past interspersed between the story of a small-town seige;this novel in turn spends much of the time focused on troubled police detective,Lena Adams-looking at her character in more depth than previous novels and examining the nature of her relationship with her abusive boyfriend,Ethan.

My version of this book is also a speical paperback first edition and contains an introduction to Grant county at the back in which Karin explains how she devised certain characters and how their roles have adapted as the series progesses.This is an enlightening insight and a nice little bonus where she reveals her novels are all about "the idea of transcendance" and asks How does a person recover from horrific crime?"

This i believe is one of the stronger aspects of this series-the way you follow the characters through their own emotional and personal journeys as they attempt to come to terms with the devastating events portrayed in the novels.I also like the shock value Karin uses in describing her crime scenes in such detail;even in this book,which from its inital opening seems tame compared to the likes of say Blindsighted,there is one paticular crime scene later on that is none too pleasant when they find the body of a male beaten to death with knuckle dusters.

I cannot reccomend this series enough and Faithless in paticular is another strong entry in the series.Not for anyone who is squeamish or faint-hearted but then if you're like that you should probably be avoiding this genre in any case.....

Unfortunately,Karin Slaughter is taking a break from Grant County with her next novel,but she will be returning to it in 2007 with a new thriller-Skin privilege.Heres hoping that her new novel is as good as these and role on 2007 I say..the anticipation is already killing me...

Summary: no miss marple,these thrillers are gruesome,shocking but well worth a read-very gipping