In her latest and possibly best novel to date, Karin Slaughter entwines the story of a ghoulish serial killer with the mysterious origins of one of her most appealing characters, Georgia Bureau of Investigations agent Will Trent. With a childhood that easily rivals the one that shaped TV's "Dexter," Will is a tough but vulnerable survivor of both physical and emotional scars, a six-foot-three hunk who tries to hide the fact that he owns a chihuahua named Betty and is so dyslexic he has to color-code every report he reads.
Over the course of five books, beginning with 2006's "Triptych" and ending with last year's "Fallen," Slaughter has hinted at early traumas for Will, who was abandoned as an infant and grew up in an orphanage. His troubled relationship with his sadistic wife Angie and budding romance with Grady ER pediatrician Sara Linton have been the main ingredients ever since the characters from Slaughter's Grant County and Will Trent series met up in 2009's "Broken."
"Criminal" takes the reader back to the year Will was born: 1974, when his future boss, Amanda Wagner, and future police captain Evelyn Mitchell, are newly partnered up in the Atlanta Police Department's sex crimes unit to investigate the disappearance of a teenage prostitute last seen stumbling down Edgewood Avenue—straight into the arms of a clean-cut, good-looking white man carrying a Bible.
"I let the Lord guide my hand," he says. But this guidance includes "soap and water...blood and wine...needle and thread... penance and torture."
Almost 40 years later, a Georgia Tech student vanishes, and now-GBI director Wagner sees disturbing similarities to a case she worked as a young police officer. Normally, she would put her star agent, Will, on the case, but for reasons she won't explain, this time around she's keeping him in the dark. When he catches sight of her on a televised news conference about the Tech student, Will finds the photo of the missing girl oddly familiar. Later that evening, as Will gives Sara an impromptu tour of the dilapidated Atlanta Children's Home where he grew up, they run into Amanda, of all people. Why is she here? Why is she carrying a claw hammer? And why does she choose this moment to tell Will that his father has just been released from prison?
Slaughter braids together three taut story lines—the events surrounding Will's infancy, which affect his relationships with all the women in his life; the race to stop a killer whose identity Amanda thinks she knows; and the sexual politics encountered by Amanda and Evelyn as rookie cops struggling to prove they can handle "a man's job."
The problem is, their worst enemies aren't on the wrong side of the law.
Cue the "Cagney and Lacey" theme, a TV series Slaughter surely channeled while penning scenes in which two of the first female police officers to rise above the ranks of meter maids and traffic cops encounter a brutal work environment hard to imagine today unless you were there: catcalls, relentless bullying and even physical assaults from fellow officers.
At times, the graphic incidents Slaughter puts the partners through rival the tortures carried out by the serial killer—a parallel that will come as no surprise to readers who have long appreciated the thin line she draws between the good guys and the bad guys, the hunter and the hunted.
The women's budding friendship tells the history of Atlanta as seen from inside the APD, as Slaughter indulges her talent for in-depth research, from descriptions of the original "shanty towns" replaced by Techwood Homes—a once model community built in the 1930s—to the rage felt by the "white senior officers" on the police force following the hiring of the first African American safety commissioner.
"Criminal"'s double-story line is demanding and dazzling, like watching a high-wire acrobat dance between two tightropes. The history never detracts from the suspense, and the suspense never eclipses the complex connections between the players. If Slaughter's novels were pie charts, a couple of narrow slices would represent the serial killer and the efforts to find him. The rest consists of her ability, with each new book, to use the tangled histories and ordeals of her characters to push the limits of the genre.
As much as we long to see Amanda and Evelyn beat the odds and catch the man is whose hand is guided by the Lord, it's just as important that Will overcome his addiction to the awful Angie, so the past will stop repeating itself.
Then again—after six books, it's a love-hate relationship—our fingers are crossed that Slaughter's next installment will finally give Angie her long-overdue close-up.
"Criminal"
Karin Slaughter
Delacorte Press, $27, 448 pages
About the Author
