ARC Review: Criminal: A Novel [Hardcover]

I've finished "Criminal" the 7th book in her Will Trent series by Karin Slaughter.

Karin Slaughter’s new novel is an epic tale of love, loyalty, and murder that encompasses forty years, two chillingly similar murder cases, and a good man’s deepest secrets.

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.
About the Author

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of twelve thrillers, including Fallen, Broken, Undone, Fractured, Beyond Reach, Triptych, and Faithless. She is a native of Georgia.

Product Details
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (July 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345528506
ISBN-13: 978-0345528506

My Review:

Will Trent is a brilliant investigator working for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and has finally found true love.  He is dyslexic, scarred psychically and psychologically from living in the streets and orphanages.  His marriage to Angie a fellow orphan has caused Will terrible grief and misery.  He has fallen for Sara Linton a brilliant pediatrician even though he is still married to Angie.

This book alternates between the 1974 - 1975 to present day.  This book opens with a group of drug addicted prostitutes who are at the mercy of a brute pimp who keeps most of the money for himself.  Nineteen year old Lucy Bennett was once a very promising student but she started taking speed to lose weight.  Then she switched to amphetamine and her life spiraled downhill from there.  Her hair has been falling out and now she is another street walker with dead eyes.

The villain is a shadowy and humongous Christian who is obsessively to controlling the prostitutes he abducts. The way he tortures them is very graphically described and brutally scary.

In 174 - 1975 Amanda Wagner was on her first case with the honestly pushy opinionated Eve Mitchell (Faith's mother) trying to figure out who is killing prostitutes by brutal means.  We are treated to the sexism, racism and corruption that was present during the police department during this time period.

4/5

Thanks Authors on the Web and Random House for sending me this ARC to review, greatly appreciated!