Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
ISBN: 0-688-17457-4
September 2001

Like many others I awaited the first mystery by Karin Slaughter with a perhaps unnatural eagerness. The hovering and formidable positive buzz of a two year duration might have been a bit much for any first time author to live up to. It’s very fortunate for us that Ms. Slaughter is not just any writer. In the first outing for protagonist Sara Linton the author takes us to a small Southern town where our heroine does double duty as a pediatrician and the town’s Coroner. This book does not to me invoke memories of the first Cornwells as the author’s own publishing house has suggested but is instead reminiscent of Falkner’s writing of great evil in a small sleepy southern town. Opening with a scene of horrific violence the novel proceeds to try and solve this crime and the subsequent events with a precarious alliance between Linton, her ex-husband law enforcement officer Jeffrey Tolliver and his only female detective Lena Adams. The crimes here are very personal to all three investigators and through the unweaving of this tale Ms. Slaughter introduces us to all three in a fashion that unfolds not only their present but also their pasts and a glimmer at the end of their futures. Many of the reviews I've read of this book give away far too much of the plot so I'm going to stop here and let fellow readers simply open this book and proceed to turn pages at a rapid rate. For I guarantee that you will. And after you're done? You'll continue to think of the book. In a fast paced, extremely modern mystery Ms. Slaughter leaves you with wonderful subtleties that as you're rapidly flipping pages you may not at first ingest. Why is for instance that in her job as pediatrician Sara must deal with the issue of death but in her Job as coroner she has the ability to stop a madman and perhaps save the lives of his future victims. It is something too that the three protagonists of this book must during the course of the novel go through personal metamorphoses that leave the reader knowing that they are changed but looking forward to seeing in book two how they are changed. I'm waiting for book two with the same eagerness that I awaited book 1. Bravo Ms. Slaughter. This happens all too rarely.

Ruth Jordan