Criminal by Karin Slaughter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don’t normally include blurbs, but I suppose I should start when posting here. This one is LONG…
Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before—when Will’s father was imprisoned for murder—this was his home. . .
Flash back nearly forty years. In the summer Will Trent was born, Amanda Wagner is going to college, making Sunday dinners for her father, taking her first steps in the boys’ club that is the Atlanta Police Department. One of her first cases is to investigate a brutal crime in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Amanda and her partner, Evelyn, are the only ones who seem to care if an arrest is ever made.
Now the case that launched Amanda’s career has suddenly come back to life, intertwined with the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage. And these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.
I went through a lot of emotions with this one. The racism and sexism of Atlanta in the mid-1970s wasn’t a shock but it was a reminder of how far we’ve come. Sort of. Since we seem to be moving backwards here in the US…
While the current day case was interesting, it was the serial killer case in the past that blew me away. What an incredible view into Amanda and Evelyn’s friendship – and a glimpse into the large group of “old gals” that Amanda calls upon regularly. Getting to see Amanda as a young, naive cop (who thought fisting had something to do with punching someone) against her current day self made me feel for her. I’m still feeling all the feels about her initial contact with Wilbur.
This might be my favorite book of the series.
To Be Read Book Reviews 