Sign Up

Get the latest ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

All Suspense Coverage

Review by

The Good Son contains all the elements of a bestseller: well-developed characters, a devilish plot and hairpin turns that keep you guessing and surprised until the very end of the book. Author Michael Gruber (The Book of Air and Shadows, The Witch’s Boy) weaves three stories together, bringing the reader deep into the surroundings and mind of each character as the story plays out.

Writer Sonia Laghari plans a peace-keeping symposium in Pakistan—only to be captured by terrorists. Her many secrets and unusual past make her both feared and hated among her captors and fellow prisoners. Laghari’s son, Theo, is a soldier who exploits his military connections to wage a war of his own and devise a plot to rescue his mother. Back in the United States, Agent Cynthia Lam stumbles on intelligence that the Pakistanis are making nuclear weapons. When she discovers a scam, her aspirations of moving up the ranks at work are compromised.

In The Good Son, Gruber delves into the hot topics of the day—religion, terrorism and big government. Readers will tear through the pages, entranced by the depth of the plots and entertained by the fast pace of the storyline. Gruber’s impeccable research skills are on display here as he captures cultural nuances in descriptions and conversations.

Anyone who enjoys suspense, action, adventure and political thrillers will not be disappointed with The Good Son, which keeps the reader hooked through the end. Consider yourself warned: the story is not resolved until the last few pages.  

The Good Son contains all the elements of a bestseller: well-developed characters, a devilish plot and hairpin turns that keep you guessing and surprised until the very end of the book. Author Michael Gruber (The Book of Air and Shadows, The Witch’s Boy)…

Review by

Not all lawyers are capable of translating legal speak into compelling fiction. One of the remarkable exceptions is Scott Turow, the Harvard-educated attorney and prolific author. In 1987, Turow scored big with his first novel, Presumed Innocent, the suspenseful story of Rusty Sabich, a Midwestern prosecutor who finds himself on trial for the vicious murder of Carolyn Polhemus, a young colleague with whom he had had an affair.

The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 45 weeks. In 1990, it was translated to film with Harrison Ford starring as Sabich, whose brilliant defense attorney, Sandy Stern, goes head to head with the unglamorous but canny Tommy Molto.

Now, 23 years later, Turow has written Innocent, a long-awaited sequel. Sabich, now 60, chief judge of an appellate court and candidate for the state supreme court, is accused of killing his wife, Barbara, a mathematics scholar. Many of the same characters are back, including Stern, Molto and Sabich’s son, Nat, who was a little boy during the first case. Sabich has engaged in a second affair, this time with a beautiful and witty law clerk 25 years his junior. Anna is not quite “drop dead gorgeous,” but she’s close enough. Sabich can’t believe that such an attractive young woman is on the make for him, and initially he is determined to resist. Not for long. But after several exciting liaisons, Sabich dumps Anna, even though he has fallen deeply in love. Ironically, the broken-hearted Anna later meets Nat, now 28, quite by accident. He is instantly smitten with her, but she is convinced the relationship would be unseemly.

If all of this sounds a little tawdry, be assured that Turow carries it off with skill and flair. The big question is: How will all of this play in the murder trial? The court scenes are riveting, subject to legal twists that keep the reader in constant doubt as to the verdict. Forget the no-sequels rule: Turow is better than ever, especially in the development of his complex characters. And if this one also makes its way to the screen, Harrison Ford is still available.

Not all lawyers are capable of translating legal speak into compelling fiction. One of the remarkable exceptions is Scott Turow, the Harvard-educated attorney and prolific author. In 1987, Turow scored big with his first novel, Presumed Innocent, the suspenseful story of Rusty Sabich, a Midwestern…

Review by

Brace yourself for a pulse-pounding immersion into the fear, the stench, the horror, the rage and the valor of a Holy War. The Religion transports you to 1565 and delivers you into the frightening maelstrom of combat and the complicated passions of love.

The Islamic forces have begun their siege of Malta, and their grand plan is nothing less than the conquest of the world. The Christian stronghold is protected by the Knights of St. John, and they know what’s at stake: the destiny of mankind for all eternity. Calling themselves the Religion, the knights defend Malta the strategic key to Europe with a profound, spiritual fervor. For the knights, war is God’s blessing, a manifestation of divine will. As the battle unfolds, the indefatigable defenders, outnumbered 10 to one, will go beyond knowing God. They will discover that war makes men mad, and a select few will also discover that love makes them madder still.

Key figures in screenwriter and novelist Tim Willocks’ epic, fiendishly insightful novel include Mattias Tannhauser, the blood-stained veteran of the most ferocious infantry of the world, now a successful businessman whose loyalties are dangerously divided; Carla, the sensual countess who must suddenly confront the love and shame of her secret past; and Ludovico Ludovici, the treacherous Inquisitor whose subtlety and duplicity are exceeded only by his absolute trust in his God.

Beginning with the most frightening scene in contemporary fiction, The Religion goes on to become a fast-paced, stomach-churning depiction of the sublime beauty and grotesque brutality of a religious war the apotheosis of power, fear and faith yet through it all, something strange and wonderful survives: the exquisite resilience of the human spirit. The narrative is exuberant and extravagant. The imagery is luminous and visceral. The Religion is magnificent, passionate, terrifying and in 2007 profoundly relevant. Don’t miss it! Tim Davis teaches literature at the University of West Florida.

Brace yourself for a pulse-pounding immersion into the fear, the stench, the horror, the rage and the valor of a Holy War. The Religion transports you to 1565 and delivers you into the frightening maelstrom of combat and the complicated passions of love.

Review by

In Erin Hart’s much-welcome third mystery, False Mermaid, pathologist Nora Gavin feels compelled to return to the States to investigate the five-year-old murder of her younger sister, Triona. It was Nora’s despair over that death, and her inability to pin it on Triona’s husband, Peter Hallett, that drove Nora to return to Ireland, her childhood home. Now Peter is remarrying, and Nora is determined—driven—to prove his guilt, even though it means temporarily leaving Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire and their deepening relationship.

In Minnesota, Nora reconnects with Detective Frank Cordova, the original investigator still plagued by both the cold case and his interest—unrequited—in Nora. Cordova is as willing as she to focus on Peter, and as frustrated by their failure to link him to the murder. Wanting to prove her theory, and protect her niece Elizabeth, now 11, Nora pleads with Peter’s new wife to see what she is getting into. She is met with icy refusal and the same accusations Peter levels: that crazy Nora is still after him. Worse, the pair insist that Nora did not really know her younger sister, and that Triona’s own risky behavior led to her death.

But when another woman’s body is found, in the riverside park where Triona often ran and where evidence suggests she was killed, Nora believes Peter has struck again. Through her expertise in bog bodies—the remains are preserved in Ireland’s ancient bogs—and her contacts in the forensic community, Nora discovers the reverse: whoever the killer was, Triona was not the first victim. Working with Frank to review evidence old and new, Nora gets closer than ever to the proof she craves—and is led back to Ireland, where the old legend of the selkie might cast light on her sister’s death.

Erin Hart’s Haunted Ground (2003) was nominated for an Agatha and an Anthony for Best First Novel. Once again, Irish music, myth and history are integral to setting, character and even plot. The reader will find herself almost believing, along with Elizabeth and Triona, in the ancient stories of the selkies, humans on land and seals in the sea.

Leslie Budewitz sometimes sings Irish folk songs in her car while driving around western Montana.

In Erin Hart’s much-welcome third mystery, False Mermaid, pathologist Nora Gavin feels compelled to return to the States to investigate the five-year-old murder of her younger sister, Triona. It was Nora’s despair over that death, and her inability to pin it on Triona’s husband, Peter…

Review by

In a comic thriller written with remarkable flair, successful author Michael Gruber (Valley of Bones) serves up an elaborately layered and devilishly detailed masterpiece in The Book of Air and Shadows. The plot revolves around an intriguing quest: the modern-day search for an unknown, unpublished and hidden play by William Shakespeare. Action begins with the discovery of a 17th-century letter along with a baffling coded message that had been hidden in the binding of an 18th-century book. An oddball cast of quirky characters sets off in search of what seems to be a controversial Shakespearean historical drama that would have changed the course of English history (and the monarchy) if it had been discovered by Shakespeare’s contemporaries.

The dramatis personae of Gruber’s tour-de-force adventure include Jack Mishkin, an intellectual property lawyer (and weight-lifting Lothario with plenty of family problems), two bookstore clerks (Albert Crosetti, an aspiring Roman Polanski without much of a love life, and Carolyn Rolly, a dead ringer for Brigid O’Shaughnessy of Maltese Falcon fame), a couple of corduroy-clad Shakespearean scholars, a handful of NYC immigrant gangsters and more than a few unconventional family members. Filled with laugh-out-loud humor and meta-fictional satire, Gruber’s literate novel intricately recursive and richly allusive in its innovative narration adroitly conflates the truths and lies of the human comedy; in fact, throughout The Book of Air and Shadows, Gruber wryly deconstructs the strange ways in which we deceive ourselves into believing things that are (and perhaps ought to remain) unbelievable. Not since A.S. Byatt’s Possession (1990) has an author so successfully combined literary puzzle, tempestuous duplicity, human adventure and good old-fashioned story-telling. Gruber’s highly recommended novel about the search for that which would be the greatest single event in Shakespeare studies a quest full of chases, murders, mysteries and eccentric characters is engaging, fast-moving and hilarious. Don’t miss it! Tim Davis teaches literature at the University of West Florida.

In a comic thriller written with remarkable flair, successful author Michael Gruber (Valley of Bones) serves up an elaborately layered and devilishly detailed masterpiece in The Book of Air and Shadows. The plot revolves around an intriguing quest: the modern-day search for an unknown, unpublished…
Review by

British mystery and thriller writer Mo Hayder (The Devil of Nanking) will please her growing body of fans with this latest novel, her fourth. It’s a book best read on a night when the wind howls and the rain lashes against the windows. Just be sure the doors are locked.

Joe Oakes, a journalist whose specialty is debunking hoaxes, is summoned to Pig Island, off the coast of Scotland, by the members of a religious cult known as the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, to calm the uproar caused by a video of a half-human, half-animal creature cavorting on the island’s beach and rumors about the practice of satanic rituals there. When Oakes encounters the PHM members, he finds a seemingly benign, if slightly furtive, group of voluntary exiles from conventional society. But the group lives in fear of its charismatic founder, Malachi Dove, who’s fled to the other half of the island to live in grim isolation, walled off from his former followers by a line of pig skulls, an electrified fence and chemical waste drums.

Not satisfied with the evasive explanations for Dove’s frightening behavior offered by the island’s inhabitants, Joe sets off to find the truth. His investigation leads indirectly to a horrific act that devastates the PHM community and to the discovery of Dove’s daughter, Angeline, who is afflicted by a bizarre congenital deformity. With Angeline in tow, Joe flees to the mainland, where his troubled wife, Lexie, who narrates a significant portion of the novel in counterpoint to Joe, has been awaiting his return. From that point on, the novel recounts the heart-pounding race between the authorities who are trying to bring Dove to justice for the crimes they believe he’s committed and the deranged killer. Pig Island is not a book for the squeamish, but it’s one that will keep readers turning the pages until the horrifying mysteries of the island ultimately are unraveled.

Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

British mystery and thriller writer Mo Hayder (The Devil of Nanking) will please her growing body of fans with this latest novel, her fourth. It's a book best read on a night when the wind howls and the rain lashes against the windows. Just be…
Review by

What would the fallout be if someone could prove that the modern state of Israel is in the wrong place that it occupies a territory far distant from the one divinely promised the Jews and specified in the original version of the Old Testament? What if the historical Israel had actually been located in what is now Saudi Arabia? Would the revelation of these facts inevitably bring the always bubbling Mideast to a full boil? It is around these potentially apocalyptic prospects that Steve Berry weaves The Alexandria Link. His premise is that the contents of the fabled Library of Alexandria including the Old Testament still exist at a secret site, the whereabouts of which have been made known only to a succession of wise and deserving scholars. So now the race is on to find the library, with one faction intent on exposing Israel’s tenuous historical hold on the land.

To play out this adventure, Berry brings back characters he introduced in The Templar Legacy. Chief among these are Cotton Malone, the retired government spook; his former boss, Stephanie Nelle; and the beautiful but deadly Cassiopeia Vitt, who functions here as Nelle’s guardian angel. There are so many doublecrosses it practically takes a scorecard to keep track of them. Breathlessly paced, The Alexandria Link is a wonderful dramatic ride.

What would the fallout be if someone could prove that the modern state of Israel is in the wrong place that it occupies a territory far distant from the one divinely promised the Jews and specified in the original version of the Old Testament? What…
Review by

With True Blue, best-selling author David Baldacci says he knew “from the beginning” that his memorable duo, Mace and Beth Perry, would be taking center stage again in future thrillers. No wonder: this pair of sisters, who both started out as cops but ended up on different roads, make for compelling reading.

Beth is the chief of police in Washington, D.C., while Mace is just out after doing two years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. Now she wants to clear her name and win back her badge. The sisters, whose close and supportive friendship held strong all through Mace’s imprisonment, are still watching each other’s backs, and now they’re zeroing in on a web of murder and deception that is spiraling outward, taking in D.C.’s darkest criminal neighborhoods as well as the upper echelons of Washington’s political hierarchy.

Baldacci is at the top of his game here, exercising his talent for creating both winsome and darker-than-dark characters that keep readers turning the pages. Mace grinds her mental gears and operates on a short fuse, but she keeps the book going at a breakneck pace as she steams through D.C.’s mean streets on her cherry red Ducati. Chief Perry has worked hard to get where she is, but her stubborn honesty and inner stability keep the book from bursting apart at the seams. Together these two complement each other as they stand alongside a cast of intriguing characters, including Roy, the hoop-shooting lawyer who found the first body (we know he’ll be back!); Captain, a disheveled homeless vet with a penchant for Twinkies; Abe, the richer-than-rich research scientist who hires Mace; and Mona, a vengeful U.S. attorney with friends in high places. Central to the action are Psycho, Razor, Alisha and other streetwise residents of the “Seven D” neighborhood on one side of town, and the high-flying politicos and shadowy intelligence agents who populate the other side—leaving us not at all clear about which is really the wrong side of the tracks.

In researching True Blue, Baldacci accompanied police patrols on their rounds of D.C. neighborhoods, and wrote a nationally published profile of the capital city’s real-life police chief, Cathy Lanier, the first top-ranked female law enforcement officer in that city’s history. The author’s in-depth research into Lanier’s up-through-the-ranks career helped inspire many of the absorbing details that elevate this book to a notch above most crime thrillers.

With True Blue, best-selling author David Baldacci says he knew “from the beginning” that his memorable duo, Mace and Beth Perry, would be taking center stage again in future thrillers. No wonder: this pair of sisters, who both started out as cops but ended up…

In 1991, Douglas Coupland burst onto the literary scene with the groundbreaking Generation X, a novel that brilliantly captured the minds and imaginations of those who stepped tentatively across the threshold of adulthood in the late 1980s. Now, nearly 20 years later, Coupland revisits the generational divide, this time focusing on the pressures and insecurities looming on the horizon of the 21st century.

Generation A uses the same framed narrative style as its predecessor; five disenfranchised 20-somethings—all trying to find their place in the world—unfold their individual stories through alternating chapters. They are scattered across the globe, unaware of each other’s existence until the unthinkable occurs, irrevocably linking them to one another: they are each stung by a bee. In Coupland’s vision of the future, bees have long been extinct, so getting stung by one is not just something to blog about, it’s worthy of attention from the National Guard! All five Wonka kids (as they call themselves) are rushed into isolation where they are scrutinized and studied for several weeks before finally being released back into the wild without any explanation. Soon an undeniable pull causes them to seek one another out, eventually uniting on a small island where their narratives slowly begin to merge as they piece together not just what has happened to them, but more importantly, why.

Within the first pages of Generation A, readers will realize that they are in the hands of a master, that they have been gifted with something more lofty and ambitious than the average work of fiction. Coupland playfully exposes the contemporary contradictions that plague us: in the era of Twitter and mass communication, as we play exhibitionist and voyeur on a global stage, how is it that we feel more isolated than ever? Where can genuine human connections be found, or are they a thing of the past?

A piercing analysis of our modern society, Generation A is exhilarating and insightful, bubbling with wit and verve. Readers who are willing to brave Coupland’s literary pyrotechnics and unconventional exercises in style will be richly rewarded with a thoughtful and mind-bending analysis of what makes us tick. Coupland is better than ever, and Generation A is certain to thrill readers of every generation.

Stephenie Harrison writes from Nashville and now considers herself part of Generation A.

In 1991, Douglas Coupland burst onto the literary scene with the groundbreaking Generation X, a novel that brilliantly captured the minds and imaginations of those who stepped tentatively across the threshold of adulthood in the late 1980s. Now, nearly 20 years later, Coupland revisits the…

Review by

<b>Did she or didn’t she?</b> Pam Lewis’ suspenseful first novel, <b>Speak Softly, She Can Hear</b>, opens with an incident that spirals into the macabre. Two teenaged girls who attend a posh school in New York have planned to use a ski trip to Stowe, Vermont, as a cover for a liaison with an aspiring actor who has agreed to deflower them. Carole Mason is an intelligent but self-conscious girl. Her friend Naomi is the edgy product of a flamboyantly dysfunctional family. The actor is named Eddie, and from the start it’s clear that he’s bad news.

After Eddie and Carole have had sex at a seedy motor lodge, another woman named Rita shows up. Eddie tries to involve the drunk Carole in a threesome, but she ends up instead crouching clumsily at the head of the bed, more in the way than intimately involved. Suddenly, Eddie breaks through Carole’s drunken haze, announcing that Rita is dead and claiming Carole has somehow broken her neck. After Naomi shows up, the three of them drag Rita’s corpse into the woods behind the motor lodge, where they bury it in the deep snow.

Carole can never clearly reconstruct how she might have killed Rita, and since the story is told from her point of view, the reader shares her confusion. For the rest of the novel, Carole tries to get away from the memory of that night and from Eddie and Naomi, but she somehow keeps circling back to it and to them. Without any explanation to her parents, she drops out of Vassar, goes across the country to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, and then comes back to settle in Montpelier, Vermont. There she opens a restaurant called Chacha’s and falls in love with a black man named Will. The author cleverly integrates the suspense elements of the story with a perceptive depiction of the social and political tumult of the ’60s. The dramatic climax is not entirely a surprise, and the resolution is a little too neat, but Lewis’ skill in depicting character, incident and milieu make this a very promising debut. <i>Martin Kich is a professor at Wright State University.</i>

<b>Did she or didn't she?</b> Pam Lewis' suspenseful first novel, <b>Speak Softly, She Can Hear</b>, opens with an incident that spirals into the macabre. Two teenaged girls who attend a posh school in New York have planned to use a ski trip to Stowe, Vermont,…

Review by

Reading The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell’s 17th novel about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta and her gang of detectives and forensic criminologists, is not unlike taking a 500-page romp on a Tilt-a-Whirl.

Diehard Cornwell fans already know the drill, but for the uninitiated: Expect plot twists to snowball at a rate of tricky-to-solve murders, bomb threats and mistaken identities popping up every few pages (with some mafia involvement thrown in, too). In other words, there’s no predicting what will happen to Scarpetta over the course of the novel. The plot loops, spins and changes directions until the very end.

In this installment, Scarpetta is working in New York City to crack the murders of high profile financial advisor Hannah Starr and beautiful waitress Toni Darien—all while serving as senior forensic analyst for CNN’s (fictitious) “The Crispin Report.” Her husband, forensic psychiatrist Benton Wesley, is caught up in the case of a patient who may (or may not) be connected to Scarpetta’s murders. Rounding out the crew are NYPD detective Pete Marino, who shares a sticky past with Scarpetta, and Lucy Farinelli, Scarpetta’s computer investigator niece.

Scarpetta is serious about her work. “The body doesn’t lie,” she thinks during an argument about the timeline of a murder. “Don’t try to force the evidence to fit the crime.” When the crime starts to directly involve Scarpetta—a mysterious package shows up at her apartment; Lucy’s past involves some dangerous liaisons—the plot gets complicated as we fear for our heroine’s life.

Although Cornwell’s prose can be corny and over-dramatic (“She was volatile, couldn’t settle down, and she hated it, but hating something didn’t make it go away . . .”), The Scarpetta Factor is still a rip-roaring read, in no small part because of explicit details and forensic jargon (perhaps aided by Cornwell’s six years as a writer and computer analyst at Chief Medical Examiner’s office in Richmond, Virginia).

The point of view alternates between the main characters. Because of these shifts and the multiple details to resolve, the plot can drag; just when we think we’ll get some resolution—bam!—the narrator changes and 200 pages later we’re still wondering what’s going to happen.

Although frustrating, this technique keeps us hooked and biting nails until the end, the objective of any good crime novel.

In her childhood, Eliza Borné read a Nancy Drew book a day. She can whip through a “Scarpetta” book in about the same amount of time.

Reading The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell’s 17th novel about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta and her gang of detectives and forensic criminologists, is not unlike taking a 500-page romp on a Tilt-a-Whirl.

Diehard Cornwell fans already know the drill, but for the uninitiated: Expect plot twists to…

Review by

John LeCarré is thought by many of his myriad admirers worldwide to be the master of the modern spy novel. In fact, he is perhaps the innovator of the complex and intricately plotted tales of the cold War, which pit the secret services of Great Britain against those of the Soviet KGB. His early The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and the later Smiley’s People series built his deserved reputation, based no doubt in part upon his experiences in years of working in British Foreign Services.

His new novel, rocketing to the top of the best seller lists, is for this reader his best work. The Russia House brings the period under contemplation to the present of Gorbachev, glasnost and perestroika and examines it with meticulous attention.

A brilliant Russian defense physicist of the highest rank, for what he has come to feel are moral and totally compelling reasons, has decided to betray his country and reveal secrets of the utmost importance to the West. By accident he meets and is greatly impressed by a British publisher called Barley Blair: a drinker, facile, talented and eccentric, who is on a business trip to a Russian book fair. He decides that Barley must publish for the West a manuscript that will reveal the secret material, devastating in its impact.

Blair, not particularly interested, is with the greatest reluctance enlisted by British intelligence and the American CIA to deal with the Russian and secure this greatly desired material for them. Blair, sent back to Moscow, meets and is immediately and seriously attracted to Katya, a beautiful Russian woman, the former lover and now trusted friend of the Informant, code-named Bluebird, who is to be the intermediary between her friend and Barley. The intricate plot, not to be detailed here, finally winds to the somewhat ambiguous but ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Le Carré, whose writing improves with every book, is a very good writer indeed; he is, in fact, a fine novelist. The Russia House, while it entertains brilliantly, does much more. The view given us of the working style and techniques of the American and British intelligence services is absorbing and more than a bit frightening, particularly as it reveals jealousy and lack of confidence and trust which exist between the western services. He also makes it quite clear that whatever leaders at the top may appear to feel about the lessening of tension between East and West, the intelligence professionals remain unconvinced, even if hopeful. The Cold War continues on those levels, as always. Whether this is LeCarré’s own view is one of the principal ambiguities. And then, finally, there is the beautiful, lovely, passionate love that blooms for Katy and Barley, at whatever cost to their countries and to themselves. The major characters are engrossing, and the lesser figures, mainly intelligence personnel, are entirely convincing and always interesting. In sum, a splendid novel, read at whatever level.

Alan Zibart, a bookseller for more than 50 years, is the publisher’s father.

A well-crafted tale of espionage, The Russia House entertains brilliantly, and does much more.
Review by

Karin Slaughter is known for her intricately plotted mysteries, which usually contain graphic depictions of violent crimes, most often against women. In Undone, she continues to alarm and enmesh the reader, this time with a villain whose aversion to and lust for the female sex causes him to blind his victims so they can’t see their fates, and perform an act of surgery (without anesthesia) which ultimately gives his pursuers a clue to his identity.

If readers can get past the harsh details of the crimes Slaughter depicts—and since she’s an international bestseller, obviously millions can—then Undone is just what the doctor ordered. The doctor in this case is Sara Linton, who in previous books has seen her police chief husband, the man she believes to be her one true love, murdered before her eyes. Trying to put the past behind her, she has moved to Atlanta where she is now head of emergency medicine at Grant County Medical Hospital.

Sara is on duty when the first victim is brought to the emergency room after being hit by a car while escaping her captor. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents Will Trent and Faith Mitchell, last seen in Fractured, are also first-hand witnesses to the arrival of the tortured and traumatized victim. Faith has fainted while at work and Will, her partner, has brought her to the hospital. Will heads out to the scene of the accident; Faith fumes because she has been left behind. However, she soon finds out she has some major problems of her own to deal with, specifically diabetes, which means a major lifestyle change and the possibility of being chained to a desk—a fate worse than death for Faith. Plus she’s pregnant by her now departed boyfriend.

Slaughter does a masterful job of weaving the personal lives of her characters with their professional responsibilities. Sarah is using her work as a doctor to keep from dealing with her husband’s death. Will, due to profound dyslexia, cannot read, a condition he is desperate to hide from his co-workers. Nor does he get much comfort at home, since his wife spends the majority of her time in other men’s beds.

Slaughter gives her characters tremendous depth of character, making them totally believable. Readers appreciate their quirks, share their angst, savor their interactions with each other. Slaughter says her fans often ask ,“Is this real?” It’s not hard to understand why—her writing makes it feel that way.

Perhaps that’s one reason why her books can be so unsettling. It’s disturbing to read about the truly evil villain at the heart of this fast-paced thriller. One cannot help but think, “What if that happened to me?”

For readers who like their suspense as gritty and violent as a real-life crime spree, Slaughter’s Undone is a sure winner.

Rebecca Bain writes from Nashville.

For readers who like their suspense as gritty and violent as a real-life crime spree, Slaughter's Undone is a sure winner.  

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Recent Reviews

Author Interviews

Recent Features