Dr Sara Linton and her husband Chief Jeffrey Tolliver are arguing in the woods backing on to Sara's parent's house when Jeffrey falls over a metal pipe coming out of the ground. They look closer and realise there is something hard buried under the ground. Digging down with their bare hands they find a wooden box and prying open the boards reveals a young girls dead body - hands still in claw shapes as she scratched to be let out of her make shift coffin. Someone had buried her alive and Sara and Jeffrey had their work cut out finding out who did this.

The young girl's family are a secluded bunch who run a soy bean farm and employ ex-cons as they get out of prison and dead beat druggies who need somewhere to try and straighten out. They run their farm like their home and preach Jesus and the bible to everyone around them. They are certainly not the norm but Jeffrey cannot quite find a way in to dig deeper into their unusual lifestyles.

Karin Slaughter has written lots of books in the Grant County series so far and this is the fifth book I have read so far. I have really enjoyed the continuity of the characters and have grown with them as more is revealed about each one with each passing book. This was no exception and I welcomed them back like an old friend, however the story line here didn't grab me as quickly as her previous books had done.

I think it was a slower pace than other stories she had written about Jeffrey and Sara and although the initial find of the dead girl was early on in the book, it then became a little bit laborious in the resulting criminal case as Jeffrey piled through interviews and clues.

It was clear from the start for me where the baddies were and I don't think Slaughter meant to try and hide any surprises for us as the reader this time. It was never told outright what went on until very near to the end but it was almost a case of clarification as you read the book rather than revealing and I didn't enjoy this so much.

I like the fact that it was an even book in terms of characters though, as the last few have leant more towards one or the other in terms of character involvement. Jeffrey's best Detective, Lena Adams, features heavily in all the books but in the last couple it was either Lena or Jeffrey and Sara that took centre stage and in Faithless I found it much more evened up and this was a nice change.

The murders in this book were much less gruesome than previous instalments as well and this left me somewhat disappointed to be honest. The thing I had liked about Slaughter was her ability to cover topics I had not read about before, and although being buried alive is pretty nasty, we are party to it after the event and it didn't seem to hold the same impact for me.

Overall I did enjoy this book but nowhere near as much as the previous ones in the series and I hope her next in the set - Skin Privilege - is a step back to her old style. However if you have read the other books I certainly wouldn't skip this one, it is still worth the read, just not as enthralling as her others.