Fractured » (Bargain)

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including Beyond Reach and A Faint Cold Fear, which was named an International Book of the Month Club selection; she contributed to and edited Like a Charm. She is a native of Georgia, where she currently lives and is working on her next novel, which Delacorte Press will publish in 2010.

A SEARING EXPLORATION OF A SHOCKING CRIME AND ITS AFTERMATH...

With its gracious homes and tree-lined streets, Ansley Park is one of Atlanta's most desirable neighborhoods. But in one gleaming mansion, in a teenager's lavish bedroom, a girl has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her horrified mother stands amid shattered glass, having killed her daughter's attacker with her bare hands.

Detective Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is here only to do a political favor; the murder site belongs to the Atlanta police. But Trent soon sees something that the cops are missing, something in the trail of blood, in a matrix of forensic evidence, and in the eyes of the shell-shocker mother. Within minutes, Trent is taking over th case-and adding another one to it. He is sure that another teenage girl is missing, and that a killer is on the loose.

Armed with only fleeting clues, teamed with a female cop who has her own personal reasons for hating him, Trent has enemies all around him-and a gnawing feeling that this case, which started in the best of homes, is cutting quick and deep through the ruins of perfect lives broken wide-open: where human demons emerge with a vengence.

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

Karin Slaughter's Fractured is a superior crime novel because Slaughter writes well on several levels. It's first and foremost a police procedural that describes in impressive detail efforts to find the person or persons who killed one Atlanta teenager and kidnapped another. The investigators are tormented by thoughts of the horrors that rich, attractive, 17-year-old Emma Campano may be suffering as the hours pass. But more than most crime novelists, Slaughter is also interested in relationships, and she describes many complex ones among her characters. Finally, Slaughter, who has lived in Atlanta for a number of years, gives a sense of that city's people, mood and history. All this adds up to a crime novel that is denser, more challenging and ultimately more rewarding than most.