Karin Slaughter loves broken characters. Maybe too much. And maybe that’s why I can’t give five stars to this book. There’s a lot of good in it–the plotting, the pace, the wordsmithery and the suspense. But the characters, especially those in law enforcement, are so broken that I just can’t suspend disbelief enough to imagine they’d even be there. The characters’ flaws end up taking me out of the story again and and again, distracting me from the rest of the good about the book.
Faithless is the penultimate book in Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series. When I began this series, I really wanted to like it, but each successive installment keeps hitting me as meh. Slaughter is a superb writer–her plotting, pacing, scene construction and word choice are all very good. She is a master at building suspense. I think I’ve finally identifies the problem I have with the stories–I don’t like the characters. All of them are flawed, which seems to be the trend these days, and I’m a romantic at heart, so that rubs me the wrong way. But they also make poor decisions vis a vis their work–decisions that would likely get one severely reprimanded, if not fired, had they occurred in real life. Naturally, the results such decisions are responsible for many of Slaughter’s plot twists, and her characters don’t seem to learn from their mistakes. I just can’t gin up much sympathy for people like that. In Faithless, protagonists Police Chief Jeffery Tolliver and county coroner Dr. Sara Linton discover the body of a young woman who was entombed alive in a box with an air pipe attached, only to be killed later by cyanide poured down the pipe. The investigation leads to a rural religious cult. However, as much or more of the action in the books come from the characters personal demons–Jeffery and Sara’s on-again, off-again relationship, Detective Lena Adams abusive relationship and Sara’s sister’s involvement with the cult. I figured out the mystery pretty early on, so most of my reading was done just to prove I was right while shaking my head at the characters’ ill-considered actions. I’ll read the last book in the series just to finish what I’ve started, but I don’t hold out great hope. Of course,these problems might be why the author chose to end the series after just six entries.
This is the fourth book in the Grant County series that I have read, and I’m obviously ambivalent. There’s something in the books that keeps me reading and I want to like them, but I just haven’t gotten the rush that I get from a book that I really like. This one starts with a bang, literally–two thugs break into police headquarters, shoot a cop in the face with a shotgun and wound other people, including protagonist Chief Jeffery Tolliver, and hold the rest of the occupants hostage, including protagonist Dr. Sara Linton and a bunch of grade school kids on an early morning visit. So this is going to be a suspenseful drama about a hostage situation, right? Well, not really, because the story flashes back to a trip that Jeffery and Sara made at the beginning of their relationship to his hometown in Alabama, where they become embroiled in small town drama and relationship issues. Of course, the mystery is how all of this relates to the taking of police headquarters in the present. We also have the tale of the third protagonist, Detective Lena Adams, who has rejoined the sheriff’s office on her first day back, and now must deal with the hostage situation on the outside. If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is. The mystery is eventually solved after many twists and turns, but by the time it was I almost didn’t care. The author seems to introduce plot twists by changing the direction of the story on a whim, getting the reader interested in one plot line then abruptly charging off in a different direction without providing a satisfactory resolution to the current one. The characters follow a similar path–they’re highly reactive, not very proactive. All of this engendered much confusion and frustration in me, the reader. I do want to finish the series, mainly because Karin Slaughter is one of the most successful mystery authors in history, so she’s gotta be doing something right. But so far, it’s been a rough go. I hope she hits her stride soon.
This book was a disappointment, for several reasons. First, the story felt forced and fragmented. Some of the plot twists strained credulity and had a bit of a Deus ex machina air. Second, the author made a major gaffe, sustained over many pages, by confusing a shotgun with a rifle. I couldn’t believe this wasn’t caught by an editor in a traditionally published novel by a bestselling author from a major publishing house. The Remington Wingmaster was repeatedly referred to as a rifle and the terms caliber and gauge used interchangeably. The error was sufficiently serious and sustained to significantly detract from my enjoyment of the story. The author even thanked a source at the end of the book for educating her about shotgun terminology! Lastly, the characters’ angst actually became tiresome, mainly because they seemed to do little to overcome it. Reading about self- pity is never pleasurable. Character development was almost nil in this novel. I will read the rest of the books in the Grant County series, but I hope they’re significantly better than this one.
Kisscut is the second entry in Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series, and it is a gem. New depth is added to familiar characters, the action is taut, and the villains are villainous indeed, their actions disgusting and horrifying. The worst pat is the knowledge that people like that actually exist. My only complaint is that sometimes all of the subplots overwhelm the main plot, making the book a tad longer that it ought to be. I also found an egregious error involving someone trying to slip a magazine into a revolver, which should not have gotten past an editor in a traditionally-published book. But all-in-all, I enjoy the author’s work and intend to read the rest of the series.
Triptych by Karin Slaughter
