Customer Reviews

Indelible

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There's nothing much more frightening than a hostage situation. Leave it to Karin Slaughter (who has been compared to Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs) to open her latest Grant County crime opus with a wide screen scene of blood and carnage.

Two men with guns ablaze have burst into the Georgia police station and shot one officer to death, wounding others. They've taken hostages, among them is Sara Linton, part-time pediatrician and medical examiner. She's come to the station for a conversation with her ex, Jeffrey Tolliver, who is now the police chief. There's no room for talk among in this bloodbath.

Slaughter then pulls a fast one and does a flashback to when Sara and Jeffrey first met, thus creating two story lines. On one hand you have the death struggle between the hostages and two apparently psychotic captors and the blossoming love affair between our two protagonists. A challenge for any reader, but not Broadway and TV actress Becky Ann Baker who segues beautifully between the young Sara and her physical attraction to Jeffrey despite his reputation, and the older, wiser Sara who finds herself in what might be a fatal countdown.

Suspenseful listening!

- Gail Cooke

Today began like any other day, until the shooting started.

Medical examiner Sara Linton, tagging along with her lover, police chief Jefferey Tolliver, is at the police station when two young men with masks and guns barge in and start shooting...leaving one officer dead and Jefferey wounded.

As the tense hostage situation builds, Sara begins to unravel the mystery of the two men who hold them captive only to discover their plan is one of revenge based on the sins of the past.

`Indelible' was a good read. I enjoyed the present day plot of the hostage situation, but the alternating chapters of the earlier years plot got in the way of pacing. The two separate plot lines did come together to tie everything up, but I am not a fan of books that alternate plot lines and time periods between chapters and this novel did it throughout. On the plus side there are some genuinely surprising twists and several tense action scenes. Karin Slaughter is a good writer and her dark, gruesome thrillers are some of the more enjoyable to come out over the years, but her newest in not on par with her previous books.

Nick Gonnella

I think Karin Slaughter is the real deal. She writes believable characters, great dialogue and great suspense. INDELIBLE just proves once again that Slaughter knows how to write a mystery novel and has plenty of surprises in store for the reader. What I enjoy most about Slaughter's novels is that there are always disturbing issues that are in your face and realistic. Implausible? I don't think so. This woman writes about the ugly side of life that many people don't either know about or don't want to face. No matter how graphic or disturbing, her books are captivating reads. I like her voice and she is original and again, the real deal. She deserves blockbuster status for continuing to write and improve with each new book. I applaud you Ms. Slaughter for your consistent characterizations, realistic dialogue and an all around great read. I highly recommend this novel if characterization is important to you as well as realistic dialgoue and realistic plots/actions/scenes. One of the best female suspense writers around. Read her. You won't be disappointed. As for trying to compare her to other established writers - don't. She's in a class all by herself.

Other authors I enjoy: Julia Spencer Fleming, Michael Connelly (who has praised Slaughter as well), Clinton McKinzie and last but not least, Anne Frasier.

As one can see from other reviews, a Karin Slaughter book invites "love it or hate it" reactions from readers. To those who hate it, I suggest read books from an author more to your liking. But to those, like myself who find her writing riveting, and to others who are looking for crime novels that are edgy, brilliantly conceptualized, character-driven, and amazingly well-written, I say bring them on. This fourth book in the series puts Slaughter's three protagonists--medical examiner Sara Linton, her lover and ex-husband police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, and police detective Lena Adams--in a nail-biting hostage drama. At the same time, Slaughter gives us the prequel story that explains the present crisis. Could not put it down, and when I was through, I was sorry I rushed to the end, because now I have to wait another year for the story to continue. Slaughter's books are not for "cozy" readers, but are among the best of the "harder-edged" books being written now.

After reading "A Faint Cold Fear," I was very much looking forward to another one of Slaughter's entertaining and suspensful works of fiction. And I am here to write that she's done it again with "Indelible" in delivering a fast-paced, gripping, and suspensful novel.

This book begins with Sara Linton, the county's peditrician and medical examiner (go figure), visiting her ex-husband, Jeffery Tolliver, at the local police station. As things start to roll, everything turns worse. Two men take everyone in the station hostage, leading to a un-stoppable read.

One thing that made this book difficult to put down was the intricate weaving of present and past in the chapters that follow the first. As the flashback begins, you meet a younger, perhaps more naive, Sara, and a surprisingly more mature Jeffery Tolliver. With this flashback, Slaughter weaves the past to the present, explaining how this past that Jeffery and Sara lived has something to do with the present. The alternation often goes by chapters; and one is the flashback while the other morphs to the present.

Slaughter seems to write very accesibly to the general public, allowing her writing to be read clearly and even at times deeply. You can feel the raw energy that the character is going through, and this, I believe, makes Slaughter worth the time to read.

The characters themselves haven't changed much, but I would've liked to see Lena play a much more pivotal role in this story. New characters are introduced which seem to act similar, if not totally a mirror copy, to the original characters in the first three novels. And despite the short length of "Indelible" you meet a surprising amount of character development, which is also a plus.

One thing, however, that seemed to annoy me, more than anything, is the typical, stale relationship that Jeffery and Sara share in the past and even the present. Both of them are predictable, with Sara being both clingy and naive, and Jeffery acting macho and cavalier. It surprises me that someone of Sara's integrity and character, all of which have been established well in the previous novels, would still consider Jeffery to be her one and only. They both stroke me in this new book as being so needy that one, in fact, could only settle for the other.

Other than that, I think Slaughter has written another top-notch book and am eagrly looking forward to "Faithless".

Karin Slaughter is known as a something of a "blood and guts" thriller novelist. Her books are typically filled with tons of graphic and sexual violence, usually perpetuated against women and children. This fourth book, INDELIBLE, is pretty much more of the same. If you like her prior books, this novel will pretty much meet your expectations.

This book is essentially two stories, one that takes place in the present and one that takes place around 12 years earlier. The present story deals with a hostage situation at a police station involving pediatrician/small town medical examiner Sara Linton and her ex-husband chief of police Jeffery Tolliver. The past story involves Sara and Jeffrey when they were first dating, and a murder that takes place when they visit Jeffrey's childhood town in Alabama.

Both the past and present stories are filled with Karin Slaughter's signature themes: graphic violence, rape, sexual and physical abuse against children, dysfunctional sexual relationships, bigoted Southerners, and Sara and Jeffrey's love/hate relationship (which has grown pretty tiresome to me). Most of this is portrayed in a melodramatic, over-the-top fashion throughout the novel. Characters are briefly introduced, then terrible things happen to them shortly thereafter.

This book isn't badly written, but in the end, I just found it more unpleasant than thrilling. Part of the problem is Sara and Jeffrey -- neither of them is particularly likable, in my opinion. I also got tired of the sheer volume of dysfunctional behavior in this book, which became gratuitous after a while. The plot is also based on a wild set of coincidences, where certain characters have to be in exactly the right place at the right time to move the plot forward.

If you want to try Slaughter, I suggest reading her first book, BLINDSIGHTED, instead. That book was pretty graphic also, but I felt the characters at that point were fresher and more likable.

Karin Slaughter has quietly made a name for herself as Patricia Cornwell's heir apparent. Her Southern sensibilities, combined with compelling characters, detailed descriptions of crime scenes and psychological tension, have made her three previous Grant County suspense novels popular and critical favorites.

Although INDELIBLE shares its rich Southern backdrop and deftly drawn main characters with Slaughter's earlier works, its focus and approach are dramatically different. Whereas the earlier Grant County novels centered on serial killers and grisly murders, INDELIBLE travels freely between past and present as it investigates not only its characters' troubled pasts but also three separate crimes separated by decades.

INDELIBLE starts off quietly enough, as pediatrician and part-time medical examiner Sara Linton stops by the police station in her small Georgia town. She's dropping off a report, but she's also hoping to check in with police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, her ex-husband (and on-again, off-again love interest) who has offered a not-entirely unwelcome reconciliation. Within minutes, though, all hell breaks loose, as two young men start a shooting rampage in the station lobby, killing several officers, wounding others, and taking everyone else hostage. Sara realizes almost immediately that this is more than a random act of violence; the two killers seem to have a personal vendetta against Jeffrey himself.

As Sara desperately tries to save Jeffrey's life while protecting the lives of the other hostages (including a group of schoolchildren), the narrative travels back in time to 1991, when Sara and Jeffrey were first dating. Sara is still denying her developing love for Jeffrey, and she is still hiding some important secrets from him.

When the two young lovers head off for a rare vacation together, Jeffrey takes Sara to Sylacauga, the small Alabama town where he grew up. There, Sara meets Jeffrey's mother and his high school friends, and she discovers that Jeffrey has more than his own share of skeletons in the closet. When one of Jeffrey's oldest friends is implicated in a shooting death the night of Sara and Jeffrey's arrival, and Jeffrey himself is brought up as a suspect in a newly unburied crime dating back to his high school days, Sara is forced to reevaluate her opinion of --- and her feelings for --- this tough-talking cop she has fallen for so hard.

As the narrative travels back and forth from past to present, the storyline never gets jumbled or confused. What could have become a mishmash of parallel stories instead comes together in a genuinely suspenseful climax, as three seemingly unrelated murders suddenly start to make sense together. And by revealing more about Sara and Jeffrey's past, Slaughter has greatly enhanced their appeal and emotional depth. As Jeffrey Tolliver lay bleeding on the police station floor, the reader will hope that these traumatic events can at least provide Sara with the same kind of emotional catalyst as the Sylacauga crime that brought her and Jeffrey together in the first place.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

I can't understand the bad reviews...I'm mystified. I found this book to be an exciting,suspenceful,fast read. I had a hard time putting it aside to do my house work, feed the family, etc. Seriously, though, this book had it all and I read it in a day. I loved that it was both a follow-up to A Faint Cold Fear, plus a flashack to the past and what caused this hostage stand- off to come about. I also hope there's another book to follow so I can find out about Lena's baby(?), and I'm hoping for a wedding AND a miracle baby for Jeffrey and Sara. Buy and read this book, you won't be sorry.

Georgia pediatrician/medical examiner Sara Linton visits her former husband Grants County Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver at the station house when two thugs arrive with guns blazing. The duo precisely kills or wounds several cops and other people at the station house including visiting children on a class trip. The pair lays siege to the building with Jeffrey being the target of their attention.

Sara reflects back on her life with Jeffrey wondering who would want him dead. She thinks back to twelve years ago when they made an impromptu stop in his hometown of Sylacauga, Alabama in spite of his vows to never go there. Jeffrey's friend Robert a cop, who lived next door to Sara's then mother-in-law, apparently killed an intruder. The wife Jessie was bewildered and unable to provide information, but Sara knew that Jeffrey altered the crime scene and refused to explain or give her any information as if he was covering for a fellow blue knight. Thus a major clink in their relationship occurred as trust became an issue. Could that event caused today's episode?

This exciting tale actually occurs before BLINDSIGHTED and enables readers to see how the relationship between Sara and Jeffrey evolved the way it has. The storyline contains two subplots as the present crisis provides plenty of action, but also uses flashbacks to describe the pivotal incident in the lead couple's past. Though some minor questions nag such as why the side trip to Alabama while heading to Florida occured, Karin Slaughter writes a fast-paced thriller starring two wonderful lead characters who love one another, but both knows that is not enough.

Harriet Klausner

I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by this book

as I loved her previous works. It still contains all the trademark elements of earlier books but with the flashbacks in this one it did at times make it somewhat of a muddled tale.