Competent yet characterless - the series continues (Faithless - Karin Slaughter)

Member Name: fizzywizzy

Product:	Faithless - Karin Slaughter
Date:	14/11/06 (192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clever story line, perfectly gruesome

Disadvantages: Characters becoming boring, a bit too long

“Faithless” is number five in a series of crime fiction novels by author Karin Slaughter. Being a fan of the genre, I was delighted when I first discovered her work and have read each book in the series, most recently “Faithless”. The series centres on Medical Examiner, Sara Linton, and her husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver.

THE PLOT

Sara and Jeffrey stumble upon the dead body of a young woman who appears to have been literally scared to death; her autopsy reveals a terrible and sinister means of death.
They trace the girl to an isolated farming community outside Tolliver’s jurisdiction – a community where, it seems, religion is used to breed fear and obedience. Jeffrey enlists the help of Detective Lena Adams to solve the murder but with the case threatened by Lena’s increasingly erratic behaviour will Jeffrey be able to find out the identity of the killer before he or she can strike again?

MY THOUGHTS

Readers who have enjoyed “Kisscut” and “Blindsided” will be happy to learn that this is more of the same; Slaughter certainly lives up to her name and is a skilled creator of gruesome murder scenes, making the perfect blend of medical detail and bloody description. She is also expert at devising a scenario that gives her investigators and the reader, of course, plenty of motives and potential perpetrators without the story becoming too complicated and overburdened with too many characters.

In Linton and Tolliver she has created two engaging and believable characters but they are now becoming tired and in trying to make each book a stand alone, yet still part of a continuing story, about another fifty or so pages are included in order to retrace old ground. It certainly does mean that each book – and this one is no exception – can be enjoyed independently of the others, but it is also frustrating to the long time reader who does not need a recap on Sara and Jeffrey’s romantic situation or on why Lena lives with her dead sister’s girlfriend. The only consolation is that in this novel the other characters - those just in this story - are actually well-drawn and believable, if a little stereotyped and cliched.

While “Faithless” will certainly keep readers guessing, it is fairly implausible; I mean – the Police Chief and the town Medical Examiner coming across a dead body in the woods! A little too easy if you ask me. This is not the only example of trite and unbelievable writing in this book – anonymous letters, mysteriously appearing documents, an intuitively discovered matchbox….

Nonetheless, this is a very readable and not un-enjoyable novel. At 544 pages it is at least a hundred pages longer than it needs to be and would benefit from a little pruning. However, Miss Slaughter shows she can still turn out an excellent and thrilling crime novel even if her characters are becoming more than a little jaded.

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Summary: Classy crime novel but time to end the series