REVIEW: ‘Fractured’ by Karin Slaughter

Frac­tured (2008) by Karin Slaugh­ter is the sequel to last year’s, Trip­tych, fea­tur­ing Spe­cial Agent Will Trent of the Geor­gia Bureau of Investigation.

The story is set in Atlanta and the nar­ra­tive is told in third person.

The open­ing of the story shoots off like a pis­tol. A mother comes home to find her daugh­ter dead and the killer stand­ing over the body. The events that hap­pen next will result in an out­come that may sur­prise you.

Spe­cial Agent Will Trent and his super­vi­sor, deputy direc­tor of the GBI appre­hen­sion team, Amanda Wag­ner, are called in to look over the crime scene as a polit­i­cal favor. The victim’s grand­fa­ther was a bil­lion­aire devel­oper who had made his share of ene­mies over the years while gath­er­ing up a few polit­i­cal allies along the way.

Will and Amanda arrive at the crime scene, which is in one of Atlanta’s most afflu­ent neigh­bor­hoods, fully pre­pared to take over the case if it looks like a con­tract hit. Shortly after arriv­ing, how­ever, they dis­cover that the Atlanta PD has com­pletely mis­read the scene. The GBI takes over the case almost imme­di­ately when it is dis­cov­ered that there has been a case of mis­taken iden­tity and that there is another vic­tim in this case who has been kidnapped.

Will is part­nered with homi­cide detec­tive Faith Mitchell and he doesn’t like it; he prefers to work alone. Faith’s a cop with the Atlanta PD and she was given this assign­ment to ease the ten­sion between the local and state law enforce­ment agen­cies; a sign of truce for yank­ing another case away from the Atlanta PD. As excited as Faith is to work on this high pro­file case, she has a per­sonal prob­lem with Will: she resents him.

Six months prior, Will had arrested six Atlanta PD offi­cers and forced sev­eral high rank­ing offi­cers to retire because they were skim­ming cash off nar­cotic busts. As a stranger com­ing in to clean house, Will is viewed as a social pariah within the local police depart­ment. Faith’s mother, Eve­lyn Mitchell, was one of the high rank­ing offi­cers Will had inves­ti­gated that resulted in her being forced to retire. Due to some well placed polit­i­cal con­nec­tions, from up the chain of com­mand, her mother man­aged to escape being sent to prison.

I’ve tried to craft this review in such a way as to not spoil it for you. The themes of Ms. Slaughter’s lat­est sus­pense novel of sex­ual abuse, revenge, obses­sion, trou­bled teens, vio­lence against women and vic­tim recov­ery — is noth­ing new. She throws a few jabs at the media as well. Mov­ing on.

The author’s nar­ra­tive cer­tainly will keep read­ers turn­ing the pages. But you know, Slaugh­ter has never been one to shy away from show­cas­ing life’s ugly real­i­ties. She seems to spe­cial­ize in dys­func­tion and tells her sto­ries in such a way that is rather cap­ti­vat­ing to read. Her mon­sters are the aver­age joe on the street and they tend to be well hid­den from society’s view.

As for Spe­cial Agent, Will Trent — his back­ground, his rela­tion­ships, his work ethics, his demeanor, his char­ac­ter has made me bond to him com­pletely. You see, Will har­bors a secret that he has become adept at hid­ing and he’s learned to com­pen­sate for it. He’s man­aged to make a suc­cess of him­self despite com­ing from noth­ing. He was raised in the fos­ter care sys­tem for 18 years and has since went on to become an agent with the GBI.

As to his per­sonal life, Will’s in a unhealthy rela­tion­ship with a fel­low cop that he needs to end but he won’t. She knows his his­tory and her pres­ence in his life pro­vides him with some mea­sure of safety. Will doesn’t act like a cop and his impas­siv­ity and awk­ward social skills tends to rub his part­ner, Faith, the wrong way at times. How­ever, Will is good at his job and he’s damn good at read­ing crime scenes. He’s an enigma and unpre­dictable and I am drawn to him because of these char­ac­ter traits. Slaugh­ter knows how to write inter­est­ingly dynamic char­ac­ters and this book is no exception.

Frac­tured has to be Karin Slaughter’s best book to date. She may have hit her stride with writ­ing this series and I plan to tag along for the ride. Given our past his­tory [cough], I’m will­ing set aside past griev­ances and complaints.

While the first part of the story starts off with the first sur­prise twist, the rest of the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds rather slowly and nicely over the course of four days. As the plot moves along, the story picks up pace and it gets harder and harder to put the book down. So, what does Frac­tured mean in rela­tion to the story? Does the title fit? Yes, the title is apt for this the story. If I had any com­plaints at all, I would be hard pressed to find them, let alone list them; but no book is per­fect. I did feel that the Epi­logue was a lit­tle long-winded but I under­stood that the author was try­ing to wrap things up.

Ms. Slaughter’s nov­els are always char­ac­ter dri­ven and Frac­tured is no dif­fer­ent. One of the high­lights of read­ing this story besides fig­ur­ing out the mys­tery was watch­ing the rela­tion­ship develop between Faith and Will. They have great chem­istry together but they spar often because Faith feels she is being con­stantly kept out of the investigation.

Faith, in her own right, is a rather inter­est­ing char­ac­ter. She’s 33 years old with a 18 year kid in col­lege. She’s been a cop who just worked the hours on the clock and went home to an empty house. This case pro­vides her with the oppor­tu­nity to shine. Faith started off this story resent­ing Will, admit­tedly, for doing his job. But along the course of the inves­ti­ga­tion, it was nice to see her start to respect him and see that he is a good cop.

Frac­tured is the sec­ond book in this pur­ported series and some parts of the plot of the first book, Trip­tych, is dis­cussed here briefly. But Frac­tured does stand alone very well. While there is nary a romance in this story, I didn’t miss it. My grade, A and that’s with­stand­ing any flaws. Frac­tured is avail­able in hard­cover and ebook. Publisher’s Weekly also gave this book a starred review.