REVIEW: Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter

Beyond Reach by Karin Slaugh­ter, July 31, 2007 release. Avail­able for­mats include hard­cover, audio CD and cas­sette and ebook. Beyond Reach is the 6th book in the pop­u­lar Grant County series fea­tur­ing Dr. Sara Linton, pedi­a­tri­cian and part-​time coro­ner set in a fic­tional town out­side Georgia.

The story opens with a taunt ten­sion and a vio­lent death. The reader is offered a glimpse into a seri­ous sit­u­a­tion that is about to go down and only has one omi­nous ending and that Lena is involved.  Flash for­ward to the present, Jef­frey and Sara learn that Lena has been arrested in a small town out­side Grant County and is held as a person of inter­est. There was a dead body found at the scene and Lena may or may not have been involved.  So Sara and Jeffrey travel from Grant County to Reese, Geor­gia in hopes of help­ing Lena untan­gle her­self from what­ever prob­lems she is facing within this small rural town.

Before Lena’s trouble’s inter­fered, Sara Linton had been facing a nasty mal­prac­tice suit. She is being sued by a parent for delay­ing therapy for their ter­mi­nally ill child. Sara’s wor­ried that her insur­ance car­rier will cave and pay the family thereby paint­ing her as a neg­li­gent doctor. The law­suit has far reach­ing effects in the com­mu­nity. Most of the res­i­dents of Hearts­dale shun or avoid Sara and there­fore Sara has closed her clinic pend­ing the out­come of the law­suit. How­ever, Lena’s trou­bles are now front and center and this pro­vides Sara with a tem­po­rary dis­trac­tion from her own problems.

The author does an excel­lent job going back and forth between the present and past to bring the two threads together for the climax of the story. Alas, I was com­pletely unpre­pared for the unex­pected plot twist for this story, too. As usual, Beyond Reach was a sus­pense­ful story, well plot­ted with the high­light for me being the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of Jef­fery and Sara’s rela­tion­ship. Of course Sara doesn’t care for Jef­fery gal­lop­ing to Lena’s rescue but they both stay in Reese and figure out what’s going on. In Lena’s usual fash­ion she dis­tances her­self from the very people who want to help her by using them to help her escape and elude the author­i­ties. This causes fric­tion ini­tially between Jef­frey and the local sheriff.

We learn that Lena was on vacation, checking on her uncle, Hank Norton, a former drug addict who raised Lena and her twin sister, Sybil. Lena learns that he recently fell off the wagon and started using again. Lena decides to check around and talk to the local folks to find out what trig­gered his relapse. Mean­while, Jef­frey learns that some skin­heads have inun­dated the small rural town with metham­phet­a­mine. The local sher­iff seems elu­sive and laid back despite the recent increase in crime. There are quite a few red her­rings the author throws around. How­ever,  Jeffrey does get to the bottom of the problems that Lena is faced with that leads to a very unex­pected plot twist to the story. 

As a reader who was emotionally as well as financially invested in this series I must state that I am dis­ap­pointed that Ms. Slaugh­ter has decided to go in a direc­tion I find some­what vexing. Just to recap and this infor­ma­tion may be spoil­ers for those who’ve never read this series: through­out this series we’ve had to deal with Sara’s pain from her brutal rape that has resulted in her inabil­ity to have chil­dren. We watched rekindle her relationship with her phi­lan­der­ing ex-​husband, Jef­frey Tol­liver, who cheated on her but ultimately regains her trust.

We’ve had to endure Lena’s self-​destructive per­son­al­ity and her lengthy recov­ery from being a victim of a rape and deal­ing with the murder of her twin sister. I’ve had to sus­pend dis­be­lief for and stom­ach a lot of the vio­lence in such a small town with a high body count. Grant County has had its share of vio­lent crimes that con­sisted of rape, incest and murder from perps who some­times remain elu­sive from the law. I could accept the end­ings of most of her books that ended with jus­tice never ful­filled because it is a real­is­tic outcome.

So much dark­ness and sad­ness with only very little hap­pi­ness as it seems to me that as read­ers we’re left deal­ing with one tragedy after another. Was there any light in this series? I’d like to think so with Sara and Jeffrey’s rela­tion­ship because that was the one thing that anchored me to this series that has been con­sis­tently dark and bru­tally vio­lent. How much more trial and tribu­la­tion must the char­ac­ters and the read­ers endure? Alas, as sus­pense­ful and well writ­ten as this novel was for me, I’m unde­cided if I would want to con­tinue forth. The path that Ms. Slaugh­ter has decided to go seems to be more of the same. Alas, I hope she meets the chal­lenges she’s set forth for her and this series and wish her con­tin­ued success.

In the end, Beyond Reach was a cap­ti­vat­ing read for me despite the ending. I’ve had sev­eral days of review­ing my feel­ings about this book to accept the con­clu­sion but I strongly dis­agree with it. Over­all, I will give this book the B+ it deserves for the cap­ti­vat­ing, page turn­ing, taunt sus­pense novel that it is for me and an F for the emo­tional manip­u­la­tion you have forced your loyal read­er­ship to endure. I hope that it was worth it.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Karin Slaugh­ter, Mys­tery, Grant County Series, Beyond Reach

Tagged as: Grant Country series, Karin Slaughter, Malpractice, Methamphetamine in rural town, Suspense