“On an ordinary spring day, Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returns home to a nightmare. Expecting to find her mother minding Faith’s new baby daughter Emma, she is horrified to discover Emma locked in the shed, her mother’s safe open, her gun missing and a trail of blood to the front door.
Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood. She stumbles across two more intruders, and within minutes they too are shot dead. And when the Atlanta police force turns up, Faith has some difficult questions to answer. But she has some desperate questions of her own. What were the killers searching for? Ex-Atlanta police chief Evelyn Mitchell was once under investigation by Faith’s partner Will Trent. Is her mother directly involved this time, and where is she now?
With Faith suspended from duty, Will, together with the help of Dr Sara Linton, must piece together the fragments of a brutal and complicated case – and catch a deeply troubled and vicious murderer with only one thing on his mind. To keep on killing until the truth is finally revealed…”
Special Agent Faith Mitchell is in a hurry: her training seminar over-ran and she’s late to pick up her baby girl from her mother’s; but when she arrives she’s in for a huge shock: her mother, an ex-police chief, is nowhere to be found, and further investigation brings the discovery of Faith’s baby safe but locked in the garden shed. Rather than waiting for reinforcements as she’s advised, Faith rushes in and discovers a dead man in the utility room and blood everywhere. She’s then forced to kill two other armed intruders so when Faith’s superiors arrive she’s suspended from duty. Now it’s up to her partner, Will, and Dr Sara Linton to solve the case.
This is the first Karin Slaughter book I’ve read, despite her status as a well-renowned author with a very loyal following in the book world. ‘Fallen’ is the third in Slaughter’s ‘Georgia’ series, which combines the characters from her ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Grant County’ books. I usually prefer to read series in order, but not having done so didn’t hamper my enjoyment of this novel; it did however make me very keen to read the author’s other works.
It was the superb characterisation which really made the story for me; I thought Will Trent’s character was particularly well-written – he was a far more complex individual with his dark background and Chihuahua than you’d expect a Special Agent in a crime novel to be. I loved the way his boss Amanda didn’t cut him any slack because of his dyslexia, she was one tough cookie; very intelligent and very good at playing her cards close to her chest.
I also enjoyed the rather tense relationship between the police department and the Special Forces, both wary of each other and determined to ensure that the other party don’t overstep their mark. I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea whether a lot of the Slaughter’s details regarding guns and police procedure are correct, but they certainly came across as realistic and kept me enthralled.
Karin Slaughter is obviously an author who is extremely talented within her genre, and with some great surprises, a lot of which I honestly didn’t see coming, proper dark humour and real, emotionally charged characters, ‘Fallen’ was a thoroughly enjoyable crime novel. It was action-packed from start to finish and certainly kept me turning the pages!
4 stars
Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood. She stumbles across two more intruders, and within minutes they too are shot dead. And when the Atlanta police force turns up, Faith has some difficult questions to answer. But she has some desperate questions of her own. What were the killers searching for? Ex-Atlanta police chief Evelyn Mitchell was once under investigation by Faith’s partner Will Trent. Is her mother directly involved this time, and where is she now?
With Faith suspended from duty, Will, together with the help of Dr Sara Linton, must piece together the fragments of a brutal and complicated case – and catch a deeply troubled and vicious murderer with only one thing on his mind. To keep on killing until the truth is finally revealed…”
Special Agent Faith Mitchell is in a hurry: her training seminar over-ran and she’s late to pick up her baby girl from her mother’s; but when she arrives she’s in for a huge shock: her mother, an ex-police chief, is nowhere to be found, and further investigation brings the discovery of Faith’s baby safe but locked in the garden shed. Rather than waiting for reinforcements as she’s advised, Faith rushes in and discovers a dead man in the utility room and blood everywhere. She’s then forced to kill two other armed intruders so when Faith’s superiors arrive she’s suspended from duty. Now it’s up to her partner, Will, and Dr Sara Linton to solve the case.
This is the first Karin Slaughter book I’ve read, despite her status as a well-renowned author with a very loyal following in the book world. ‘Fallen’ is the third in Slaughter’s ‘Georgia’ series, which combines the characters from her ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Grant County’ books. I usually prefer to read series in order, but not having done so didn’t hamper my enjoyment of this novel; it did however make me very keen to read the author’s other works.
It was the superb characterisation which really made the story for me; I thought Will Trent’s character was particularly well-written – he was a far more complex individual with his dark background and Chihuahua than you’d expect a Special Agent in a crime novel to be. I loved the way his boss Amanda didn’t cut him any slack because of his dyslexia, she was one tough cookie; very intelligent and very good at playing her cards close to her chest.
I also enjoyed the rather tense relationship between the police department and the Special Forces, both wary of each other and determined to ensure that the other party don’t overstep their mark. I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea whether a lot of the Slaughter’s details regarding guns and police procedure are correct, but they certainly came across as realistic and kept me enthralled.
Karin Slaughter is obviously an author who is extremely talented within her genre, and with some great surprises, a lot of which I honestly didn’t see coming, proper dark humour and real, emotionally charged characters, ‘Fallen’ was a thoroughly enjoyable crime novel. It was action-packed from start to finish and certainly kept me turning the pages!
4 stars
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