REVIEW of ‘Undone (Grant County Series No.7)’ by Karin Slaughter

UNDONE (Grant County) by Karin Slaugh­ter is the follow-up to BEYOND REACH pub­lished by Ban­tam Dell. UNDONE marks the merg­ing of two series by Slaugh­ter — Grant County series and the Will Trent series. Is this the end for the Grant County series?

WARNING: The fol­low­ing review con­tains spoil­ers for the Grant County series so if you haven’t read this series or in the mid­dle of read­ing this series please do not read any further.

Slaughter’s first book in the Grant County series was BLINDSIGHTED (2001). The story cap­ti­vated me from start to fin­ish. The sto­ries were all set in the fic­tional town out­side of Atlanta, Geor­gia and fea­tured Dr. Sara Lin­ton who was the town coro­ner and prac­tic­ing pedi­a­tri­cian. She often worked crim­i­nal cases with her hus­band, Jef­frey Tol­liver, who was chief of police of the small town.

Slaugh­ter is a mas­ter when it comes to writ­ing about dys­func­tion. The peo­ple in her sto­ries are almost always flawed or dam­aged psy­cho­log­i­cally or phys­i­cally. If you enjoy char­ac­ter dri­ven sus­pense sto­ries then Slaugh­ter should be on every mys­tery reader’s must read list. But you must have a strong stom­ach because Slaugh­ter holds noth­ing back when it comes to graphic vio­lence. Espe­cially toward women.

The vio­lence toward women is just one aspect of her sto­ries that I find hard to read. The women in her sto­ries often come across as manip­u­la­tive, over­bear­ing, bitchy, cold and dis­tant. Dr. Sara Lin­ton embod­ies most of those char­ac­ter­is­tics I just listed but she actu­ally light­ens up a bit in UNDONE. We get to see her softer side espe­cially since life dealt her a recent blow.

I had guessed cor­rectly about Sara’s future after what hap­pened in BEYOND REACH. In UNDONE, she’s left Grant County and now works in the ER at Grady hos­pi­tal in Atlanta, Geor­gia. She still grieves for her hus­band and slain police offi­cer, Jef­frey Tol­liver. She’s also been car­ry­ing around in her pocket, an enve­lope for the past three and a half years that is pre­sumed to be from Jeffrey’s killer. Could it be a con­fes­sion? Or a let­ter of absolution?

A mys­tery is only as good as it’s villain(s) and the one in here was creepy. You have a exca­vated cave in the mid­dle of the woods that has all kinds of tor­ture devices that has recently claimed two vic­tims. One vic­tim barely escapes with her life after being hit by an elderly cou­ple on the high­way late one night and another vic­tim escapes and decides to kill her­self rather than to be caught alive if help didn’t arrive first.

Spe­cial Agent, Will Trent and his part­ner, Faith Mitchell, work for the Geor­gia Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion. As we are reminded in each entry, the GBI can only be asked to assist cases that are under local juris­dic­tion unless there are exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances that require them to take over offi­cially. There’s no love lost between the state and local author­i­ties. The rocky rela­tion­ship between the GBI and the Rock­dale police force almost side­tracks the cur­rent case espe­cially when two more women have been reported missing.

Most of the story has Faith and Will try­ing to fig­ure out what’s going on because the killer didn’t leave any clues to fol­low. The hor­ror and vio­lence these women slash vic­tims endured in the under­ground cave was just godaw­ful. In one scene, in the emer­gency room, Dr. Sara Lin­ton makes a puz­zling yet griz­zly dis­cov­ery about sur­vivor, Anna Lind­ley. It kind of makes the perp out to be a reli­gious nut who is a spe­cial kind of crazy.

Where the story really shines or grips you is really out­side of the mys­tery. In between inter­views, press con­fer­ences, autop­sies and police pol­i­tics — yeah, most of these people’s per­sonal lives are a wreck. Makes for good read­ing, too but then Slaugh­ter is excel­lent at char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and dia­logue and she doesn’t mind shar­ing these people’s sex lives either. She can write steamy and she’s awe­some with the chemistry.

Start­ing with Will Trent, he is the polar oppo­site of Jef­frey Tol­liver when it comes to char­ac­ter. Where Jef­frey was aggres­sive, Will is more laid back. Both men are phys­i­cally built and strong. Will grew up in the sys­tem. His mother hid him away in a trash­can when he was 5 months old. She saved his life when she was killed. Will also has a hand­i­cap that can jeop­ar­dize his job which I am not going to divulge. I will say that he’s learned to func­tion with it and is adept at hid­ing it well.

Over­all, Will’s seen as a good cop but his per­sonal life is a mess. His wife, ex-cop, Angie Polan­sky is no good. She often exits and renters his life at a drop of a dime. Angie used to work vice and knows how to pull Will’s strings. The two have a bond since they both grew up together in a group home. She’s not good for him and she keeps him emo­tion­ally teth­ered to her. Will real­izes this but can’t seem to detach him­self from her.

Briefly, Will and Sara do meet and share an awk­ward moment together along with an uncom­fort­able silence when he shares his his­tory with her after they meet a cou­ple of times. Will’s attracted to Sara but that attrac­tion is fleet­ing for both and wasn’t acted upon, thank good­ness. Not sure how I would feel about that but I’m glad that it didn’t go anywhere.

Faith Mitchell is another inter­est­ing char­ac­ter but I won’t delve too much into her back­ground. Although she comes off a bit hard and has mood swings, she is very pro­tec­tive of Will, which is why I like her a lot. Sara’s past, the inci­dent with Jef­frey and her fam­ily are all men­tioned. The hard­est part of the story was read­ing Sara’s grief over Jeffrey’s death.

I was asked recently if I missed Jef­frey by another reader and the answer is yes. I miss his char­ac­ter a lot. But I am glad to have Will Trent because he is so dri­ven, so com­pas­sion­ate and heart­break­ingly dam­aged inside and out. The two men couldn’t be more different.

Lena Adams, who was the first woman on the Grant County police force and who Jef­frey men­tored, was sur­pris­ingly absent but her pres­ence was alluded to in the story. The out­come of the cul­prit behind the pipe bomb that killed Jef­frey was also mentioned.

So Slaugh­ter tied up most of her loose ends with the Grant County series. Will we see more of Sara Lin­ton? Prob­a­bly. Her role in UNDONE was minor com­pared to Will and Faith’s role in the story. For some read­ers that might be a dis­ap­point­ment but not for me.

The only crit­i­cisms I have about the story per­tains to craft as I felt the story did slow down a lot in the mid­dle. Other than that, UNDONE is typ­i­cal Slaugh­ter which means that the story was cap­ti­vat­ing. No new ground was bro­ken and she didn’t veer too far away from what she’s been doing. One can’t help but notice that UNDONE wasn’t as tightly plot­ted as FRACTURED but still this was a very good story with a some­what weak and long drawn out dénoue­ment. B+.

Cor­rec­tion: Series order is No.7 and not No.6. Sorry for the confusion.