Karin Slaughter Faithless

Faithless

Karin Slaughter

Delacorte, Sep 2005, $25.00

ISBN: 0385339453

Grant County Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver finds the corpse inside a sealed box with a protruding pipe near Lake Grant. His former wife and current lover medical examiner Dr. Sara Linton does the autopsy on the victim identified as Abigail Bennett. To her horror, Sara realizes that slow suffocation was not the cause of death, but that the culprit poured cyanide down the pipe.

They soon learn that Abigail was a member of the Holy Grown soybean farming collective, many of whom are former felons. Upon learning of her murder they react as nothing unique occurred, that poisoning and burying a living person is normal. However, Sara, Jeffrey and detective Lena Adam also make inquiries at the local Church for the Greater Good as they begin to wonder if twisted morality involving fallen sisters and daughters might be involved especially after meeting Minister Thomas Ward and when a second buried body is found.

The toughest peach in Georgia (see INDELIBLE and KISSCUT), Sara is actually mellower than usual as this case makes her somewhat introspective reflecting on hiding her relationship with Jeffrey from her family; don't worry the forensics remain grim and gritty. Interestingly as abortion and domestic abuse are raised to an extreme level in the storyline, Lena also ponders her relationship with an abusive mate. Still this is a Slaughter story so that the police procedural plot is the focus in the usual dark grim suspense laden way.

Harriet Klausner